


The Walking Tom

by Spadesjade



Category: British Actor RPF, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Cohabitation, Death, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Heavy Angst, Hollywood, Miracles, Nuns, Prophetic Visions, Strong Religious Themes, Survival, Survival Horror, Unrequited Love, did I mention miracles?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2018-12-12 04:11:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 50,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11729244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spadesjade/pseuds/Spadesjade
Summary: While the world is overrun with the Walkers, a small band survives high up in the Hollywood Hills. Tillie is currently the only woman, and when they find Tom Hiddleston, a man with whom she’d been utterly obsessed in the Before, she realizes she has a unique opportunity. She can't quite reconcile why Tom would choose to be with her, and as the group struggles to survive in their new circumstances, the tension starts to cause problems. When new blood is introduced into the group, how will things turn out?*I still don't like it.





	1. The Last Woman In The World

**Author's Note:**

> This plot bunny finally coughed up something I could write. I have an idea where it's going but I'm open to suggestions. Warning that this isn't really about Walking Dead, but is set in that universe. And the chapters will be super short (for me).

Tillie lay awake in her sleeping bag, listening to the sounds of the night. The chirp of crickets, the scuffle of racoons, the twitter of night birds. It was a pleasant, soothing sound.

Her full name was Ottille Clementine Roberts. Tillie for short. Her mother had had a penchant for seldom used or mostly forgotten Victorian era names.

She was waiting for the sound of his step. It came most nights, but not all. It had come more frequently over the last handful of days, and she was wondering if it was going to become consistent. Especially after a week ago.

She hadn’t always been the only woman in the camp. When she first joined up, alone and desperate for protection, there had been five other women. The group had totaled fifteen. One by one they’d been withered down, until only Elanora and herself were left. And Elanora was married to Fletcher.

When they found Tom Hiddleston and his companion, they’d gone back up to ten.

Now it was nine.

Poor Elanora. Her husband called her Nor. He sobbed her name sometimes at night, and Tillie could hear it from her tent; soft but distinct. But he’d pulled together, knowing his devoted wife wouldn’t want him to just lie down and die, which he seemed determined to do at first.

But Fletcher realized, like all of them did, at some point.

When there was nothing left to live for, you learned to live just because.

Just because.

Right now Tillie was starting to wonder if maybe her “just because” had improved a tiny bit. She never would have thought herself the kind of person, Before, to treat sex the way she was treating it. Even sex with Tom, which had only been a fever dream in her previous life. But it every time it happened, she sat on the edge of a strange feeling, one she’d abandoned months ago. It felt like Hope.

Just the edge of it. She couldn’t quite grasp it, just like she couldn’t quite grasp Tom.

She dared not think on it too long. She knew it was temporary, all things were temporary. Tom could die, they could get separated, or join up with a group with women much more attractive than---

No. Best not think too much on it. All you had was now, right now.

And now she heard his step.

He unzipped the zipper, quickly to make as little noise as possible. If she had ever dozed off, this sound would wake her. Her first thought would be Walkers, but Walkers never would bother with the zip. Her second thought would be much worse than Walkers, but then his familiar profile would send that fear skidding away.

The sheer height of him made it a marvel that he could even get into her tent with so little fuss. She slept with her feet toward the entrance precisely to make it easier for him – on his hands and knees he would crawl to lie beside her. Her two-person sleeping bag was not quite big enough for both their bodies but he would unzip it all the way down and across the feet, because he was just too long for the thing anyway. If he left after, which he mostly did, he would zip it back up for her.

The man was always cold under his clothes. His skin was always chilled – probably because he had absolutely no body fat. He was much thinner than he had been Before, and while muscle had developed on him out of sheer necessity, he seemed to get thinner still.

All of them were thinner. Her especially.

While they were together, the friction always made both of them sweat. Sometimes Tillie wondered if he came to her just for the warmth. It was getting colder, and while Southern California was not subject to harsh winters, she suspected the dropping temperatures were part of the reason for his increased frequency.

Beside her, his long legs sliding against hers, his arm wrapping around her and pulling her closer, she could smell his natural smell. He’d always worn that damn cologne that everyone always raved about in the Before, but she’d never gotten to smell it. Keeping clean was a massive challenge, even in the reservoir below their camp. Water was fine but soap was a rarity. He smelled a bit like Dawn dish soap at the moment, as they used anything and everything they could scrounge.

She had never had a lover in the Before. Tom was her first. He didn’t quite believe her when she told him, but he also knew she wasn’t a liar, and after their first experience it was obvious. This bugged him. She could see it in the set of his forehead, the way his eyebrows would move in consternation, one of them always a bit higher than the other. She’d learned to read his eyebrows. The old actor in him usually tried to keep his feelings close to the vest, but his eyebrows always gave him away.

Because he stood alone, she had no one to compare him to. But she knew enough from what she’d read that Tom lived up to his reputation of intensity. He was focused when he was with her, never making her feel like this was just a way of passing time. Whatever emotions either was experiencing, the act itself was immensely intimate and he treated her with respect, and tenderness. In and outside of her sleeping bag.

But she knew he didn’t love her.

It was always unhurried, but not lingering. She always got the feeling that he felt like he owed her something and was trying to make sure he paid up. The pleasure was a sweet, exquisite escape. And it was never quite long enough.

You had to hold on to the small things. They were all that was left.

When they were done, on that night, he lay with her in the dark for a bit, his big spoon to her little spoon. This wasn’t unusual but not regular either. When he did stay for a bit, sometimes they would talk. Normally they only talked in the day. If the danger level was low and the camp was a bit relaxed.

“Tillie?” came his slightly elevated whisper.

“I’m awake.”

“I wanted to talk to you about something.”

She felt her stomach clench. She always anticipated something bad. Good things were not routine, and “normal” things were not…normal. Her mind flew in so many different directions that she fell silent and Tom had to nudge her slightly.

“Tillie?”

“Yeah, about what?”

“I was thinking, after what happened with Elanora…I was wondering how you would feel if we made our arrangement a bit more practical…more permanent.”

Practical. Permanent. One word made her puzzled, the other filled her with a dizzying glee.

“How so?”

“A joining of our shares, I guess you could call it. My tent is a bit bigger and newer, but you have a few more creature comforts than me, having been with the group longer. So there’s something we’re both gaining. If you don’t mind sleeping beside me every night…that one of us isn’t on watch, anyway.”

“You mean…co-habitating?”

Living together, it would have been called. The old her, from Before, would have slapped him and told him to go fuck himself. Of course, the old her from Before would never have been having sex with him on a regular basis without a wedding ring on her finger.

“Everyone knows that we’re…together,” he said, and the way he said that last word, as if it were some foreign object in his mouth that he didn’t know quite how it had gotten there, or if it was safe to stay, or if he should expel it.

“Yes.” At least he was being direct. “You can say no if you want. I just want to make sure that you’re safe.”

Tillie could not help but be happy that he wanted her to be safe. But of course, she was the last woman on the planet as far as she knew, or at least at this moment.

Did he really need sex this badly?

“If you don’t want to share a tent,” he went on when she did not give an answer, “I could maybe move mine closer to you, at the least. Share a bit more space.”

“Make it official,” she said, her voice rougher than she thought it would sound. She cleared her throat. “I can’t see a reason why not.”

“If you don’t want to, is enough of a reason.”

“Do you want to? I mean, you’d be giving up your space, too.”

He fell silent for a moment. Maybe he was reconsidering. She should have jumped at this opportunity – Tom was tall, strong, and he’d had bits and pieces of survival training over the years, due to the nature of his job. He was the best-looking man in the camp, in possibly the world (given the circumstances), and he was no slouch. He would provide, he would protect. He got along with everyone, he knew what to say to people to help them get along, and while he was not their leader, he was respected and listened-to.

He was a total catch. She was an idiot. But she couldn’t quite bear the bitterness of the pill that he wasn’t _choosing_ her. He was _resorting to_ her. She was a person and he had always treated her as a person, but she was a _resource_. A _unique_ resource at this point.

The old her couldn’t help her sarcastic laughter that she had to have literally become the last woman in the world in order to get Tom Hiddleston’s attention. And the laughter burned.

“I do,” he said, his voice more of a whisper, the breath of it running along the back of her neck, feeling like the most intimate caress. The way his lips shaped those two words, they sounded like a marriage vow. Not the emotion, necessarily, but the gravity.

“All right then,” Tillie replied. “It’s a good idea. I’m in.”

She felt his very slight shake, a chuckle. “I’m glad that’s settled.” Then he pressed his lips to the back of her head, just behind her ear. She felt the tip of his nose press into her scalp. She closed her eyes, feeling a shiver of pleasure. Not sexual pleasure, but a much deeper, more intimate kind of pleasure. The kind she wanted to kick away because she knew, without a doubt, that eventually, in a matter of days, weeks, months, whatever, it was going to go away.

“Me too,” she said, her voice a bit higher pitched, which she covered with a yawn. “You going to stay, or---?”

“You mind if I stay?” He sounded very sleepy, too. As if the conversation had strapped the very last bit of energy from him that day. “I can pack in the morning, or help you pack, we’ll figure out where—“ he cut himself off with a yawn.

“Yeah,” she said before he resumed talking. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Good.” He squeezed her then, something that felt almost like a micro-hug. His arm had been slung over her bent one, and it slipped down to rest just under it. It took a while for her to fall asleep that night, even with his warmth and smell around her, covered with the flap from their open sleeping bag.


	2. The Edge of Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we learn the dynamics of the group, and spot a tiny bit of jealousy.

2 – The Edge of Hope

 

The other man who had joined the camp was named Robert. None of them bothered with last names much anymore. He was young, maybe in his twenties, with short cropped hair that had been dyed blond. He had serious acne scarring around his cheeks, but large green eyes that were always laughing. He was much shorter than Tom, but had a few tattoos that suggested he’d been in the military at some point, although none of them asked too many questions. People shared when they were ready, not before. Nobody wanted to get too attached unless you were sure there was something to get attached to.

Robert and Tom were together often. They’d met in the shock of things, wandering the ruins, both alone. Robert had been with a much larger group and was the only one who escaped when they’d been ambushed by another. It was real dog-eat-dog kind of stuff.

He was smart and knew a lot about scavenging. He immediately became part of the group that hunted through the houses for food. The problem with Los Angeles was that there were so many people, homes stacked on homes, but the area of Hollywood they were in was a pocket of green. The reservoir was created by a huge dam, and it was named Lake Hollywood. From their particular location, you could look down into the lake and see the entire stretch of the dam, and then turn around and be staring right at the Hollywood sign. The nearby neighborhood wound up complex systems of hills, designed with the idea of keeping people out. Whatever had happened to a lot of the people who lived in those houses – there were so many possibilities – by the time Tillie’s group had set up camp, the people were mostly gone and the bands of Walkers they had become had moved downhill. Robert was pretty much an expert on knowing whether a place was still occupied by something best left alone, or if the house was ripe for picking.

The hills were very steep, and only the most fit of them could make the climb. Tillie herself had only gone a few times. Her main role in the group was to make sure everything was evenly distributed. She was good at remembering who needed what, who wanted what, and where the best use of something would be found. It kept them from fighting among themselves, from treating each other like enemies or thieves. Sometimes it all made her feel a bit like a mother, but for some reason, it came naturally to her to remind Phil to take his aspirin, or to tell Leon they’d found some canned peaches so he could make them something resembling peach cobbler. She would be the one to caution Stuart that if he went back with the scavenging group too soon before his ankle had a chance to really heal, he would be limping back. And she was usually – just about always – right.

She was forty years old, unmarried, childless. Alone in her apartment when the madness began. Attempting to drive back to the Midwest when things really got crazy, and stalled on the freeways like so many others. Somehow she met Phil, and three others who weren’t with them anymore. She and Phil eventually joined up with Leon and Noah, and from there, they’d been taken in by Mason and his group. Of those, only Mason himself, Fletcher, and Stuart were left. With Tom and Robert that totaled nine.

There would be others. Mason had a nose for knowing who could be trusted and who couldn’t, and Noah had become his second. Stuart reassured them, sometimes, when Mason wasn’t listening, that he had never known Mason to wind up taking in a snake. Mason kept them safe.

Of course, this meant Mason had to be the one to do the really ugly work.

Tillie didn’t like to think about the things Mason had to do. Thankfully she’d never had to witness anything truly awful (at least not done by Mason himself), and over the time they’d been together, both Phil and Stuart developed a bit of a guard for her. They were in their early fifties, both of them, and were in excellent shape, which explained why they’d made it this far. She knew that Stuart had once held out hope that she would share her tent with him, but the second Tom appeared on the scene, those hopes dissolved. Of all the men, the only one Tillie didn’t really like was Noah, although he’d rarely done anything openly hostile toward her. She didn’t like the way he looked at her sometimes. It would make the hairs on her arms prickle. And his tone sometimes when he spoke was rude, short, gruff. In a way that it didn’t have to be.

Mason immediately took to Robert. He recognized his skills and his usefulness. While Mason wasn’t really their official leader, he was the one they looked to regularly, with Stuart and now Robert as his left and right hands. It was utterly necessary for them to be interdependent, but there also had to be a certain amount of distance, as anyone could be killed at any time. Not getting killed was always the first order of business. Not starving was the second.

For some time, Mason had been talking to them about potentially moving into one of the larger houses as far back in the hills as they could get. Since Robert joined, it was moving much quicker. As Tillie stretched out her sleeping bag in the much-wider-and-taller tent that Tom had brought with him, she wondered how long she would be sleeping here. She had been sleeping in her tent since about the beginning, with the occasional week or two passed in an abandoned house or hotel. Once they spent a week in a Methodist church, and once two weeks in a large dining hall, but during that time they’d set up their tents anyway to get some modicum of privacy.

“Tillie?” came Tom’s familiar voice from outside. She pushed the flap and stepped out into the bright sunshine. She squinted hard, letting her eyes adjust, but she gave him a smile. “Where do you think we should put the rug?”

Tom had her rug rolled up over his shoulder. It was something she knew she would abandon sooner or later, but she’d found it and it was clean, and it had the prettiest rainbow pattern. Sometimes she would trace her fingers over the intricate lines and it would soothe her when everything got to be too much. You had to find ways to cope.

“How about next to the tent? I can set up my poles and stretch the clothesline.” It marked her own little private living space, where she kept whatever odds and ends she happened to have. A few books, some little crates where she would sort some of the goods that came in, and bottles of medicine. They always gave her whatever birth control they found, and sanitary napkins, and now with her being the only woman, they’d given her everyone else’s supply.

But she didn’t need those things. She’d had a hysterectomy when she was seventeen.

It was almost unheard of for a seventeen-year-old to get a hysterectomy, but her uterus had been severely damaged by a combination of endometriosis and adenomyosis. Her periods would last a month and her pain levels were unbearable. The hysterectomy had put an end to that, along with any chance she ever would have of having kids. They’d left her ovaries to keep her from having too many hormone issues, and her cervix, but the uterus was gone.

In the Before, she would have gotten pity from her fellow women for such a thing, but in this world, it was envy. She didn’t have to worry about how much sex she had because she could not have a kid, and she didn’t even have to worry about her periods. It wasn’t knowledge the passed around the camp but eventually everyone knew. They didn’t know the ugly details, but they knew she didn’t have all her equipment. When she was twenty-five and contemplating her future, it was a cause of depression – but in this world, it was a blessing.

“Would it be all right to put my books here?” Tom asked, pointing down to the laid-out carpet. “Is there room?”

Tom had a few books, maybe six. Battered paperbacks, small, easy to carry. He had his old Kindle as well, but the battery was dead; he held onto it simply out of hope. She found a few good-sized rocks to act as book ends for the books, and with her two canvas chairs, the whole ensemble resembled an outdoor living room. Except for when she would hang her wet underwear to dry on the clothesline. Maybe even then.

Pleased with themselves and what they’d accomplished, she and Tom spent the rest of the day being outright domestic. They had a good chemistry and got along, as Tom put it, “like a house on fire.” It was easy to be friends with Tom. Friends were important to him. But it hung in the back of her mind that they were also regularly having sex, and in the Before, without love, she had become a “friend with benefits.”

As they sat and watched the evening twilight start to stretch across the sky, Tillie felt that feeling again. Sitting on the edge of hope. How easy it would be to lie back and fall into it.

Fletcher passed in front of their section of camp and smiled at Tom. “I see you two are doing well,” he said.

“How are you, Fletch?” Tillie called. “Did you need any of that naproxen for your arthritis?”

“I’m okay right now,” Fletcher declined. “Save it for when I really need it, yeah?” He took off his hat, showing his near-bald head lined with white bristly hairs. “I think this old thing is getting a hole in it, maybe on the next scavenge we could ask if maybe they could find something?”

“We can try,” Tillie said.

“I think I’m on the next run,” Tom said. “I can look. You want one like this?”

“If you can, but anything will do except a baseball hat,” Fletcher said. Then he looked from Tom and Tillie, holding his gaze on each of them for a very long moment. “Be careful, Tom,” Fletcher said, patting Tom’s arm. “It’s hard to hang on to things sometimes.”

Tom looked thoughtful, and then his eyes cast down, a clearly troubled expression on his face. A million things went through Tillie’s head, but there were too many possibilities.

Instead, she said out loud, “Fletch, why don’t you join us for dinner.”

“Oh, I ate already, I’m on watch tonight,” Fletch said. “And I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“No intrusion,” Tillie insisted, standing up. She walked over to where the two men stood. “Did you get any of the cobbler Leon made?”

“A bit, can’t have too much sugar, or else I’ll fall asleep on guard. There was plenty left but you two had best hustle over before Noah eats it all.”

“Are you headed to watch now?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, was on my way when I saw you two—“

“You sure you don’t want that naproxen?” Tillie insisted. “It’ll help keep you clear headed.”

“It’s not that bad, Till,” Fletcher assured her. “I had three coffees, I think I’ll be fine. Go on, head to dinner. See you in the morning.” He shuffled off and returned his boonie hat to head as he went.

“He’s probably right, Noah will eat it all,” Tom said with a grin. Their voices were low. They were always low whenever possible. The camp rule was to make as little noise as possible.

“I’m not a big peach fan, you can have my serving, I know how your sweet tooth is,” she replied as they headed to the dining area.

It consisted of a picnic table. Six people could eat at it comfortably. Usually that was all that was free to eat at once, at a maximum. Two were always on guard duty, with the shifts alternating. The more people they’d had, the shorter the shifts and the longer the stretch between, but down to nine, everybody was on at least every two to three days. There were only eight, though, that took shifts. Leon did not.

Leon’s main job, as the closest thing they had to a cook, was to keep water boiling and cooling. Just about constantly. This was to keep it purified, to keep them all hydrated. He was always boiling one pot, cooling another, and then shifting the cooled water into the giant freezer they had converted into a holding tank. After purifying it with boiled water and alcohol, they found its airtight seal perfect for keeping their clean water fresh. It was a continuous effort to keep the supply up, although recently, with fewer people drawing from it, it was a touch easier.

In between this, he rationed the food and provided the meals. Some nights it was simple, like tonight’s hot dogs and beans, but he had a special creativity and was able to turn the odd mixed ingredients into something not just edible, but wonderful. It was a rare treat to have things like peach cobbler, made with a bag of almond flower crust, and sweetened with coconut sugar. It would have been better, Tom told her later, if they’d had ice cream, but it was good just the same.

Tillie helped clean up after. They liked to tease her about still being stuck in the kitchen when it was the apocalypse, and she smiled and laughed, unbothered by it. She knew she had to make herself useful with whatever skills she had, and never hesitated to jump in where she was needed. And while to a certain extent, it might honestly have been sexist to keep her from going on supply runs too often – nowhere near as often as any of the men – she didn’t mind picking up the slack elsewhere.

Everyone was responsible for their own cleaning water. Tillie had a routine of washing her clothes in groups, and staggering each set every five days – shirts, bras, underwear, pants – but for herself, she cleaned every night in her bucket behind her tent. She had taller poles that she stuck into the ground and used old shower curtains to string between them, effectively shielding her on all four sides. Inside, she would douse herself with the water, warmed by the sun throughout the day, and use whatever was available for soap – currently, a bottle of Dawn, borrowed from Tom. She used as little as possible, as dish soap had a tendency to go a long way. When she was done, Tom used her make-shift shower.

She lay in her sleeping bag, listening to him rinsing himself off, and dumping the remaining water into the wash basin before covering it. He dried himself off, changed into clean clothes, and came around to get into the tent. His was tall enough that he could step into it like a room instead of have to crawl into it like he’d had with hers. When he appeared, she said, “I suppose I have to wash your clothes for you now.”

Tom chuckled. “Honestly, I didn’t think of that.” He sat down on his sleeping bag, on the edge right next to her. He criss-crossed his legs, stretching his arms above his head. He went through a series of exercises which looked to her like yoga, as he continued to talk in a low, whispery voice. “Maybe there’s a trade we can make? You do the laundry, and I’ll…I’ll get our water tomorrow.”

“Make two trips?”

“I think I can get both buckets in one go,” Tom said. “We’ll see tomorrow.” He shifted, then realized he didn’t have quite enough room in the tent to do his exercises. “Shit…okay, back outside, I’ll be done in a few minutes.”

Tillie realized that maybe he didn’t have the room to do his exercises in the tent anymore, what with her being there. It was going to take some adjusting for both of them. Tillie stared up at the high ceiling of Tom’s tent and felt a strange kind of jitteriness. She was not a stranger to sleeping in new places, but this felt odd to her.

Everything about this felt odd to her. Most especially Tom. It didn’t matter that it had been over a month, almost two, since they’d started this…arrangement, for lack of better word; she could still not wrap her head around it. The world was in ashes, they were living on a combination of nature and scraps, nothing existed outside of this little patch of land any longer, and she was still star-struck by a man who hadn’t even quite hit his stride as an actor. He was just as human, as flawed, as fallible as she was, and yet she didn’t quite understand what the exact hell he was doing.

When he’d first shown up, him and Robert, she was the only one who knew who he was. They were a bit farther west than they were now, not as far up in the hills as Mason was trying to get them. He wanted a clearer spot, where they had better visibility, and it was Robert who made that possible. But when Robert first showed his spiky-haircut, with a rather astonished Tom trailing in his wake, Mason sounded the alarm.

Because they were both carrying very high-powered rifles.

There’d been a tiny bit of a stand-off, Robert and Tom pointing their rifles at them in pure self-defense as Noah, Stuart, and Mason used their double-gage shot guns to demand the strangers put their guns down. Tillie was not usually near the outskirts of the camp, but she’d been bringing Stuart and Noah lunch while they were on guard duty and it was all just bad timing.

“Put your weapons down!” Mason thundered at them. Robert very coolly held onto his, but it was clear that Tom was starting to panic a bit.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Robert said. “We saw your camp last night, saw your fire.”

“That’s nice. And I’m sure you thought you could just waltz in here with those things,” Mason gestured with the barrel of his shotgun, “and take what you wanted.”

“No!” Tom objected, seeming mortified by the thought. “We would never—“

At first, Tillie hadn’t quite believed it was him, but the second he started to speak, she knew that voice.

“You’re Tom Hiddleston.”

Recognition made his arms go slack. He looked at her, mouth open, expression stunned.

“Mason, that’s Tom Hiddleston,” she went on, her voice getting a bit more high-pitched, and when she heard it in her own head later, she realized she was borderline hysterical. “He’s not gonna shoot us!”

“Who the fuck is Tom Hiddleston?” Noah snarled.

“He was in the Marvel movies,” she said, struggling to calm her tone, “and The Night Manager, and Skull Island—“

“Kong?” Stuart asked.

“Yeah.” She felt her throat cut off her voice. Her face was flush with humiliation. The end of the damn world and she was fangirling.

Mason glanced at her, and then at Robert. He considered for several long moments, and then raised up one hand, palm out. “Okay. Together then.”

On the count of three, everyone lowered their weapons.

“If Tillie says you’re okay,” Mason said. And it had all gone from there.

She was a bit sore when she woke up the next morning, as Tom, being elated that they had a bit more room in his tent, had shown her there was more to sex than just plain missionary. He was pretty chipper and raring to go on his morning run. He would circle the reservoir as many times as he could, then skinny-dip in the water to cool himself off. He carried a towel to dry himself off before dressing and heading back to camp. The towel would now hang on her clothesline, drying in the October sun.

As she waited for him to come back, so they could go eat breakfast together (his suggestion), she used the leftover water, carefully covered to protect it from insects, to start washing her unmentionables. It wasn’t much more than a rinse and wring, using only the tiniest bit of soap. She went through Tom’s clothes and washed the things that seemed to need it most. It felt utterly strange, going through his things – and then she remembered how, in the Before, they all used to chuckle at how Tom wore so many of his clothes over and over. This wasn’t terribly different for him, in that respect.

She heard footsteps coming along the path that wound its way through their tent sites. “Morning, Till,” she heard Stuart greet her. She smiled brightly up at him, but his return grin was more a of a grimace. “So I see you and Tom decided to make it official.”

A distinct feeling of discomfort settled in her stomach. “Yeah, we did it yesterday.”

“I was on a scout patrol. Found some things,” Stuart said, slinging a backpack down off his shoulder. “Thought you could use…” he pulled a mirror, rather large, the size of a dinner plate, with a pink plastic backing and handle.

“Cool!” she said, taking it. “Thanks, Stu. Ugh. I need to cut my hair.” She looked up at him. “Don’t worry, if you need to use it for shaving, it’s fine, just let me know.”

“Found about six of them, brought them back for us to share.” Stuart rummaged through the bag, and Tillie watched him, curious. His dark curling hair was getting a little long against the back of his neck – every hair on the man’s body was dark, including the slightly thick layer that draped over his lower arms and the back of his hands. There was more there on his arms than on his chest, only a curling back triangle peeking up from the V in his wife-beater. “And this,” Stuart said, handing her two books.

“ _Anna Karenina_ , and _Something Wicked This Way Comes_.” She let out a low whistle. “These are great, Stu. I’ll put them in the library. Tom had a few books, too, I was thinking of collecting whatever we might have in one spot. Like a library.”

“Might want to wait until Mason figures out if we’re moving to that house we’ve been scoping out or not,” Stuart said. “We killed about a half dozen Walkers up there today, looks like the numbers are thinning out.” His face lit up a bit. “The house has solar power. Which means…hot water.”

“Hot water?” she echoed. “How…everything in California is gas!”

“Not this place. They had everything hooked up to their solar power. Electric water heater. Nothing to watch on television but if we could scrounge up some DVD’s or even VHS tapes…”

“Wow,” she breathed. “Well, to be honest, I’ll believe it when it happens. Maybe. It always sounds too good to be true.”

Stuart chuckled. He looked at her wistfully. “Things like that always are,” he said. His expression was getting that pained look again. “Tillie…I know you’re as capable of anybody else around her, but…please be careful.” Uncharacteristically, he reached over and gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Tom’s not going to hurt me,” she said, and even to her own ears it sounded like a pre-recorded response, something you said automatically, without thinking about it.

“We’ve been worried so much about protecting our bodies, we forget there are a lot of other ways to get hurt,” Stuart said. He squeezed again, let go.

“Morning Stuart!” Tom called cheerfully as he entered the clearing. His towel was slung over his shoulder, his hair still damp. “How did the trip go yesterday?”

“Found some wild eggs,” Stuart said. “Think it’s those Canadian geese, we got one and Leon’s cooking it for tonight.”

“Eggs?” Tom lit up. “For breakfast?”

“Yup. Two for each of us. Hell of a time getting them here,” Stuart added with a laugh. “We were convinced we were going to have to drop them and run if we saw any Walkers, but we made it back with a basket.”

“That’s fantastic, Stu,” Tillie enthused. “We’ll be right down. Make sure they save us our share.”

“Don’t worry, I got you.” Stuart smiled at her, glanced at Tom, and then made his way to the picnic table with a farewell jutting of his chin at Tom.

“I still don’t think he likes me,” Tom murmured, laying his towel across the clothesline. “But,” he added with a fire of excitement in his eyes, “breakfast! Real breakfast!”


	3. We Few, We Happy Few

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tillie recounts how she and Tom got started, and Tom quotes Shakespeare.

The first week Tom was with the group, they had one of their campfire gatherings. Elanora just trimmed Tillie’s hair, and anyone else who needed it – she’d been a hairdresser in her previous life and it was a useful skill. Shorter hair was easier to care for, and reduced the risk of things like lice. Tillie rather liked her hair in the bob that Elanora fashioned for her, a bit longer in the front, higher in the back. In the fading warmer weather, it was helping her keep cooler, feeling the air on the back of her neck.

They sat around the fire, enjoying the fresh venison that Noah shot earlier that day. He was a decent hunter and the reservoir was a good place for small game. Without as many people, the deer were braver coming to the reservoir for the water. Rabbits were the usual fare, with the occasional goose, duck, whatever was available. In desperate times, they would eat raccoon if necessary, but it never tasted good. Pigeons weren’t too awful, but you needed at least a dozen of them to make enough stew for everyone. Thankfully Leon was a whiz of a cook, and his game stews were each different and tasty.

The mood in camp that night was high, people were feeling good, lively. They sat around and shared stories from their old lives, the funnier the better. Tom had everyone rolling with some lesser known tales from working with Samuel L. Jackson.

And Tillie couldn’t help but notice that he was always looking at her.

The fact that she was one of the few who knew who he was had drawn him to her. At first, she was worried that he would avoid her, thinking her a crazy fangirl, but this didn’t seem to faze him. He would sit with her during meals, ask her questions about routines, and if she didn’t know any better, he would actually flirt with her when nobody else was looking.

Well, maybe it wasn’t flirting. It was the way he listened to her, absorbing everything she said as if it were the most important thing to be spoken. The intense focus of his eyes, the slight frown that would appear on his brow, the smile and twinkle that would appear in his eyes when she tried to say something funny. When they were alone, the conversation always turned personal. He asked about her life Before. He asked about the books she liked, the movies she watched. He did not ask how she survived in the chaos, who she had lost. Those came later, in quiet conversations in her tent, her head pillowed on his arm.

That night, at the campfire, Fletcher and Elanora were sitting between her and Tom, but he kept turning his head to look at her. He was telling the story about getting smacked on the head at the end of his run of performing _Coriolanus._ When he was done, and the laughter subsided, she heard herself saying how she had seen an interview with him, when he was mildly intoxicated, with a bandage (or a plaster, as he called it) on that spot on his forehead. Tom blushed and chuckled, saying that had happened a few days later when the stitches were still fresh. Between the two of them, they told the story of the drunken video, her from what was captured on screen, and him filling in the parts she didn’t see.

Elanora started asking him about what Shakespeare he’d been able to perform, and the next few hours, Tom provided what soliloquies he could remember (which was quite a few). Fletcher particularly enjoyed his battle cry from _Henry V_. Tom had to be careful not to be too loud, as the speech was quite rambunctious. Then he started to recite, softly, with great emotion, the speech from the morning of battle, _The St. Crispin’s’ Day_ speech.

“This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England now-a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”

At that moment, for whatever reason, Noah stood up. “Well, not worth much in this world, is it?” And he walked off.

Tillie watched him go, her mouth hanging open. The way Noah said it…something about it felt like a judgement, a pronouncement so severe that it rumbled over the group like a chilling wind. When he was out of sight, she turned and saw Tom, and his face had closed. He was looking down, into the fire, and if she didn’t know any better, she could have sworn she saw his eyes shining with tears. They didn’t fall, so she wondered if she was imagining things.

Everyone drifted off after that. The mood was spoiled but Mason attempted to rally them back to something resembling cheerfulness. Elanora and Fletcher were the first to leave for their tent. Robert, Leon, and Mason went one by one. Phillip and Stuart both seemed to linger, attempting to keep the small talk going, but Tillie couldn’t help but scoot closer to Tom. She didn’t say anything to him at first, but then, gently, she reached for his hand, and he let her take it, squeezing it in gratitude. Soon, they were the only ones left by the fire. After telling them to make sure it was out when they called it a night, Stuart left for his tent.

“It’s not true, you know,” she said to Tom.

“Isn’t it?” he replied, not needed to ask her what she was talking about. “I’m not a hunter, not a military man like Robert…not really a leader.”

“Tom,” Tillie said, with a firmness in her tone even she didn’t recognize, “I can’t remember a night where we were like this. Like we were really…entertained. Where we could forget, for a few minutes…what it’s like now. I mean, we can’t perform Shakespeare in the Park,” they both chuckled, dryly, “but…it did help. Noah’s just an asshole.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he just doesn’t like to be distracted.”

“We all need a distraction every now and again.”

Tom sighed, deeply, shifting his long legs so that they were nearly around her. One was behind her back, his knee in the air, and the other lay in front of her. It almost felt like he was on the verge of pulling her into his arms. His eyes met hers, and in firelight, it was damn near romantic.

“Something Robert told me,” he said with that frown of concentration he would get on his face when he was thinking deeply. “A while ago, after it was just the two of us. He told me, gently, of course, that I needed to keep my focus. That I sometimes let myself get too distracted. I thought too much about things. The reason he was a good soldier was because he didn’t spend a lot of time thinking, just reacting – that was what training was about. We talked about the training I’d had, how I played so many different kinds of soldiers, and he set me straight on a few things. Imitating reality is not the same as living it. And this world, the way things are right now, the slightest distraction…it can kill you.”

He looked so afraid, she thought. So distressed by this thought. She took his hand again, having let go of it when he’d shifted around her, holding his with both of hers.

“Human beings aren’t meant to be this dark and miserable,” she said. “We can’t sustain it. You have to have a moment of relief. We have to learn how much is too much.”

“Not a lot of room for error,” Tom said, looking down at her hands holding his.

“Then maybe we’re not supposed to live. If that’s the case.”

He looked up at her, startled. Tillie didn’t quite know what she meant by that, but she didn’t get much time to mull over it, because Tom’s other arm was around her and pulling her to his chest, and they were kissing, gently and tentatively at first, as if he were afraid of offending her. But kissing him was like everything she had ever dreamed it would be, and she leaned into the kisses, letting them get more and more passionate. She was on her knees, her arms wrapped around his neck, just a little taller than him (damn he was so tall!). Then he pulled her so she was straddling him, and she knew where this was going.

She felt only a moment of hesitation and he instantly sensed it, pulling back. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said, feeling things she had long forgotten how to feel. Sensations that were alien and triggering everything in her that said they were wrong. This wasn’t the kind of person she’d been. But this wasn’t reality, this was a nightmare, and in this nightmare, she was getting the briefest moment of relief. The dream was shifting and she was getting something she had never dared to dream she would get.

The seduction of it was too powerful to resist.

“We don’t have to do this,” he said, but there was a strain to his voice that made her not quite believe him. She knew he would never force her, but there was something desperate in the way he pulled her close, something in how he looked at her.

He needed a distraction, possibly worse than she did.

“If we do,” she said, her breath not coming evenly, “we should go to my tent. It’ll be more private.”

“Otille,” he said, using her full name, and she shivered, feeling like a fly caught in a web and perversely not wanting to escape it. “We don’t have to. I don’t want to…to take advantage of you.”

“Would you be?” she asked, her eyes meeting his, almost in a dare. “Taking advantage?”

She knew, in that moment, why this was happening. She was, in spite of the fact that they were pretty much strangers, familiar to him. That she knew him, that she made him remember happier times. And that she was the only unmarried female in the group.

That last part was a big deal.

“No,” he said, and it sounded honest. “I suppose you have…many options.”

“I’ve never—“ she started, then hitched. “I haven’t done this. Not with anyone here. Not even Before.”

He seemed skeptical. It felt like they were both lying to each other but wanting it so much to be the truth it felt like it was.

“We can’t risk you getting pregnant,” he said.

“I can’t get pregnant. I had a hysterectomy when I was seventeen.”

“Oh.”

She shrugged. “Pretty much everyone knows. But _you_ …you _don’t_ have a lot of options.” She started to slide away from him. His arms, in response, tightened, following her. He pulled her back, their foreheads touching.

“I don’t…I know there are rumors…or, _were_ rumors…about me. Before. I admit I’ve had my share of partners, but I’m clean, and….well, I don’t just do this with anyone, Otille.”

She nodded. She wanted to believe him. So they went back to her tent, and that was the first time.

She was woken by Tom gently shaking her, whispering her name in her ear. She came awake, sluggish, feeling discombobulated.  

“I hate to do this,” Tom said as she turned to him, “but I think I should go back to my tent.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I don’t…I just think we should keep this quiet. If my tent is empty all night someone might notice, and…”

It made perfect logical sense. She hadn’t taken up with any of the men, and for her to suddenly decide on Tom, well, how would that make her look? And what other tensions might it cause? Sure, nobody was fighting over her, but it was definitely something that everyone was highly aware of, that she was the only unattached female in the camp. Elanora was married to Fletcher and even if she wasn’t, the two were on the elderly side, although Elanora was still quite beautiful.

Tillie always had the feeling that as long as she stayed neutral and showed no interest in any one particular man, the tentative peace was held. But now that she had been with Tom…and who knew how long that would last? What if this was only one time?

He kissed her before he left her tent, as quiet as a shadow. They pretended nothing had happened the next day, keeping to their normal routine – of course, Tom had always paid her a bit more attention than anyone else, so that also had to remain unchanged. But she saw how he looked at her, when nobody was watching.

It confused her. She didn’t know if it was guilt or longing. There was definitely consternation and insecurity in his eyes, but the source of it eluded her. It took two days before Tom came and found her while she was on night watch, the first time they were sure they were completely alone. Things like that didn’t stay secret in small groups, and Tillie was sure everyone suspected.

“How are you?” he asked. Both of them were standing, her marking the path around the stretch of camp where she was assigned. It was far enough from where the others were sleeping that their quiet whispers wouldn’t be heard.

“I’m fine,” she said. She almost believed her own words. Truthfully her mind had been frozen between two options – feeling cheap and used on one side, and feeling the kind of glow that drifted dangerously toward love. She was more attached to Tom now, and in an entirely different way than she’d ever been, and it simultaneously bothered and elated her. But she kept her toes on the tightrope, not knowing which way to fall, afraid of both options, and needing some sign from him as to which was the right way to go.

But she said none of these things. She just waited.

“I…I hope you don’t think that night was just a one-time thing,” he said. “I know we’re going to have to be careful, but people are going to find out, and we can’t hide forever. But this all depends on…well, you.”

_Okay, so we were going with option two_ , she thought.                                      

“I like you very much, Otille,” he said, and in the dark she was sure he was looking at her, but she couldn’t see his eyes, not clearly. “But if you don’t think this is right, I will understand.”

She looked away, toward the trees and the sloping hills, doing her job, watching for any sign of intruders. She knew the difference between the scuffle of nocturnal animals and the slow drag of a Walker. She’d never encountered the latter on a single night she’d been on duty. But still, she had to watch. She used the moments to contemplate her answer.

“Come to my tent tomorrow night,” she said. “After everyone goes to bed.”

His answer was to gently cup her cheek and kiss her, before he left her to her guard duty.

_We few_ , she thought. _We happy few_.


	4. The Unspoken Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which when Tom goes on a trip, Tillie worries, but when Tillie goes on a trip, they fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story is getting hits and kudos, which is great, but hardly any comments. As a writer, I need to tell you, that is not encouraging to continue. Just the kudos (which I am thankful for) are really not enough, I'm sorry to tell you. And I don't need people to tell me how good a writer I am, as much as that is very complimentary, that is not what I need. WHAT DO YOU THINK? If you were in Tillie's spot, what would you do?

A few days after Tillie moved into Tom’s tent, he, Stuart, and Fletcher were assigned to go on a long scout, of at least three days. They used a map that Mason kept of the area, of which he had multiple copies in case something awful happened to his first copy, which he had marked and lined and circled to help them remember important places. Mason directed them down and out of the park, into the more metropolitan areas, toward some businesses that they had scavenged from in the past. If they were to find a car that worked, they could go farther along, avoiding the wrecked freeways, and see what they could salvage. They were to load up as much as possible and bring it up to the park, following the steep winding roads that kept them mostly safe.

At first, Fletcher was not assigned for the trip, but when he found out about it, he insisted. Exactly why, nobody was sure, but he knew the area better than anyone, as he had been a local resident before the mess started. Mason relented, because three was better than two when it came to hauling supplies.

Why Tom was going, Tillie wasn’t sure. It seemed random selection, and Stuart was going, not Noah, so she didn’t feel it was too unsafe. Of course, it was never safe to go into the more densely populated areas. There would be Walkers, and even though Tom had his high powered automatic rifle and Robert had graciously loaned Stuart his, it was dangerous. The whole thing made her uneasy.

Quite frankly, it made her outright paranoid.

The three days passed too slowly for her. She kept busy, and it was easy to do so. There was always something to be done. She pulled extra guard duty, she helped Leon keep the water purified, and she helped keep everyone’s clothes clean, even volunteering to wash when she didn’t have to. She slept uneasily in Tom’s tent, not feeling comfortable being in there alone, and on the third night she was sorely tempted to pitch her old tent temporarily. At least she was used to being alone in it.

In the day, when she couldn’t find much else to do, she would sit in her canvas chair and read through the copy of _Anna Karenina_. Tom had been utterly ecstatic when she’d shown it to him, and they had begun, in the evenings and by the small solar light, to read it to each other. Tom was much better at this than her, but he insisted she take passages. He said he liked listening to her voice. Of course, it was so dense and complicated that she needed to go back over things, re-read particular passages, and make a few notes in a little scratch pad she kept but rarely used. Tom would laugh at her, she was sure, if he knew, but she didn’t want to look like an idiot in front of him. She’d always known he was incredibly intelligent and she was not a slouch herself, but she was lazy when it came to her brain, and she knew it.

On the sunrise of the fourth morning, just when she was beginning to worry in earnest, the sound of tires on asphalt woke her from her light sleep. She got up, already fully dressed as they always were, and quickly slipped on her shoes. She saw something that looked like an SUV crawling along the winding road at the edge of the camp, where you could see the Hollywood sign best. Mason and Phillip were already up and ahead of her, and Fletcher was at the driver’s wheel. He brought the SUV to a stop, and both Tom and Stuart were out of the back before he could even get it into park.

“Nissan Rogue, 2014,” Stuart said proudly, “and had most of a full tank of gas. We were able to scrounge up a few tanks, not more than five or six gallons, but it gets good mileage.”

Tillie heard this in the background, as she had already flown at Tom, her arms going hard around his waist. Tom caught her, chuckling, embracing her in return. “Easy, babe, you’re going to knock me over,” he teased.

“I’m just glad you’re back,” she said, withdrawing. Tom let her, turning his attention back to the car.

“So what else did you find?” Stuart asked.

“A few rugs,” Fletcher said, going to the back and unlocking the large trunk. “Some canned goods, and…” He pulled out a cage. “Some chickens.”

Tillie gaped. There were three of them, all hens, clucking in a wire cage. They looked a little cramped, but they were there, alive.

“Holy shit!” Phillip exclaimed.

“I was thinking,” Stuart said, “we can keep them at the house. There was a pretty big yard. Shouldn’t be too hard to make a coop. We feed them grass, flowers, table scraps, and they lay eggs. We need to find a rooster to make sure we can get more chickens, but I thought I heard one cawing not too far from the house. We can investigate after we move closer.”

“That’s brilliant, Stu,” Tillie said, having approached the chickens and gently testing how friendly they were by putting her fingers near the cage. “I had a friend who kept chickens. I remember her telling me about them.”

“See? It’ll all work out,” Stuart said, beaming at her. She beamed back.

“Well, we’ll need to keep them in something a bit more permanent than this cage,” Mason mused. “I still need to send a few more scouts up to the house to make sure it’s safe. We had a few Walkers surprise Noah and Phillip last week and I want to make sure there aren’t any more hiding in the nearby houses.”

“A few,” Phillip snorted. “It was more like eight. We’re lucky we got back. Managed only to kill about three or four before we high-tailed it out of there.”

“You didn’t say anything,” Tom said, frowning.

“Didn’t want to scare anybody,” Mason said in that calm way of his. They started to unload the other treasures from the back of the Rogue, mostly food, some of it on the exotic side, a bag of marcona almonds, some jars of artichoke hearts, and strawberry jelly. There were bags of flour, which excited everyone, as bread was a real rarity, and Leon was good at making flat tortillas on an iron skillet he’d jury-rigged as a fryer. Leon looked at the other offerings with a skeptical eye, but resigned himself to go to work.

There were some T-shirts in the haul, and Tillie helped distribute the sizes and colors, figuring out who would use what best. When she handed Tom a blue T-shirt, she smirked at him and said, “I know it’s not the shirt of sex, but I’m sure you’ll wear it down just the same.”

“The what?” Tom asked, bewildered.

“Oh.” She had spoken without thinking, and blushed with embarrassment. “There was this blue T-shirt you wore, a lot…when you were practicing for Coriolanus, mostly. We called it the shirt of sex. Because of how it fit you.”

Tom raised his eyebrow at her. “And how did it fit?”

She cleared her throat. “Your nipples were always showing, you know. And it showed off your pecks.”

Tom’s expression was getting increasingly mischievous, and since they were alone, in their little part of the camp, he pulled his shirt off and put on the one she’d handed him. “Any comparison?” he asked.

She had to bite her lips. “Not really,” she said. “It’s a bit stiff.”

“I thought you liked stiff—“

“Tom, you forgot this,” Stuart said, coming into the clearing. Tillie whipped around, seeing him approaching them. It was perfectly natural, people came and went all through the camp, especially in the middle of the damn day, but that just meant her blush was much easier to see. Stuart caught it and glanced at Tom. “Did I interrupt something?”

“No,” Tom said hastily, stepping forward to take the small bag from Stuart. “Thanks, I can’t believe I forgot this.”

“What is it?” Tillie asked.

“More books,” Stuart said with a smirk. “Some more of that Shakespeare stuff he can’t seem to get enough of. And some other junk I’ve never even heard of.”

“At least it’s different,” Tom sighed. “A little variety is nice.”

Tillie told herself that he didn’t mean it like that, but she couldn’t help it. It bugged her for the rest of the day. Thankfully Tom was too exhausted from the long road trip that night, so he went to bed almost an hour before her. She didn’t sleep any better that night than she did while he was gone.

The next morning, she was awake before Tom, and off for breakfast before he could get up. When he didn’t join them, she put together a plate and headed back to their tent. He was just waking up when she came inside.

“Hey, good morning,” she said.

He gave her a bleary smile. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Didn’t sleep much the last three days.”

“I can imagine.” She settled down on her sleeping bag, cross-legged. She had the plate of breakfast, which consisted of one of Leon’s many variations of stew, and some flat bread that was thicker and rounder than the usual tortillas, almost like biscuits. There was some strawberry jelly to go with the bread if Tom chose, although the bread could just as easily be used in the stew.

“Brought you food,” she said. Tom sat up, rolling himself out of his sleeping bag, and stretched a few times before taking the meal from her. They sat, knees facing each other, and Tom inhaled his breakfast.

“Yesterday was pretty busy,” he said.

“Yeah, well, we had to get stuff sorted, and Mason was pretty pleased with the Rogue,” Tillie said. “It will make moving easier. We won’t have to leave too much behind. Plus we had to figure out how to house the chickens. Leon keeps them in his tent with him at night, can you believe it? Puts them in the cage so they won’t crap everywhere, but the smell…he has to keep the flap of his tent open all day to air it out. He is not happy about it, trust me,” she laughed, “keeps bitching about how they better lay some eggs soon. But nothing yet.”

“Have you been to the house?” Tom asked. “I keep hearing it talked about but I haven’t been.”

“I’m supposed to go tomorrow,” she said. “I’m going with Phillip and Mason, actually. They want me to take a look and help decide how we’ll distribute the rooms, figure out what we might need to do to them to get them ready.”

“With Walkers close by?” Tom asked.

“There are always Walkers, Tom,” Tillie said, noticing he’d stopped eating. “Come on, I rarely go on trips, and this is important. Things are moving forward.”

“Yeah, but…” He scratched the back of his head, a sure sign of nerves. “I don’t like the thought of you going.”

“Okay. Noted.”

“Otille, I’m serious.”

“Of course you are, you’re using my full name.”

“I usually use your full name, don’t I?”

It was true enough. Tom seemed to like it, although he did call her Tillie now and again. When they were intimate it was always Otille, though. And it felt, just a tiny bit right now, like a manipulation.

“I’m perfectly capable, and I’ll be with two others,” she said dismissively. “It’ll be fine.”

“I’ll volunteer to go in your place.”

She frowned at him. “You just got back from a three-day journey. You—“

“I don’t want you to go!” It was not quite a yell, but it was forceful. They stared at each other for several moments, almost like a Mexican stand-off.

“I don’t like that I don’t go as often as the rest of you,” Tillie said, slowly and carefully. “And Mason wouldn’t take me if he didn’t think it was safe, he’s protective too.”

Tom grunted, dug back into his breakfast, slurping up the remains. His movements were sharp, tense. He was angry.

“Why don’t you want me to go?” she asked, softly.

“Do I really have to explain?” Tom said, looking up at her from his empty plate. He wiped at his mouth, catching the remains of the food that had started to fly from his lips.

Things started to form in Tillie’s head, words taking shape that were ugly, deformed. But even though the words were rotten, the truth underneath them was as clean as a silver blade.

_You don’t want me to go because if I die, you won’t have anybody to fuck._

They tottered on her tongue. She wanted to say them. She didn’t know why she wanted to say them, but the compulsion was real, and her stomach clenched and rocked with the effort to keep them back.

“I’m going, Tom,” she said, plainly and without venom. “Mason and I talked about this, and I’m going. That’s that.”

He scowled at her, rankled. She let him stew, getting up and making her way out of the tent. She went about her daily chores, pushing it down, ignoring the things that had started to rattle around her head. She’d known the unspoken truth of this from the beginning, and had chosen to let it become coated with the nice lie that sex and emotion could sprinkle over it, like the sugar crust on a moldy donut. No sense in peeling it off. Not yet, anyway.

At dinner, Mason approached her, sitting across from her at the picnic table. They were alone, except for Leon. Everyone else had eaten earlier and Tillie had been on guard duty that day, so she came in for dinner during the second shift. She knew Tom was still mad at her, and this made her perversely pleased.

_After all, you couldn’t be pissed at someone you didn’t care about, right?_

“Are you okay with going on this trip tomorrow, Tillie?” Mason asked.

She sighed. “Yes. Why are you asking? Did Tom say something?”

“He tried to take your spot. Had a bit of a fit, bit of a drama queen, that one, sometimes,” Mason said with that calm amusement that seemed to be a part of his leadership skills. He was very much unflappable. “I told him we needed your eyes on it, now that we’re as far along as we are. He convinced me to take the Rogue tomorrow. I don’t want to waste the gas, and we can’t go all the way up, but it’s not a bad idea.”

“I’m not afraid to go,” Tillie said.

“I know that,” Mason assured her. “And truthfully, you’ve had a streak of luck when it comes to the Walkers, I want to see if it holds. You haven’t encountered any on guard duty, and on the rare time you have gone out on trips you’ve never come across any, either.”

Tillie couldn’t complain. But it did strike her as strange. She had barely laid eyes on a Walker since they’d joined Mason’s group. Even when Elanora was killed, the Walker was dead before she reached the scene.

“I guess I’m getting a bit superstitious in this crazy world,” Mason mused. “But I’m honestly not worried. And there’s three of us. I think we’ll be fine.”

Tillie smiled at him, but she was pissed. Yes, it was sweet that Tom didn’t want her to go, but for some reason, it bothered her that he would go behind her back.

These thoughts tied her brain into knots the rest of the evening, and when she got back to their tent, she crawled into her bag and faked being asleep when Tom returned for bed.


	5. A Streak of Luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tillie does not give a fuck, fights with Tom again, and goes on her trip anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I got a few comments, and here is your reward -- another chapter in the same week! 
> 
> I am not going to be writing from Tom's POV, but I would love to hear what anybody thinks it might be -- WHY is he with Tillie? I have my own theories but I want yours!

He was up before her, having gone for his run before she woke. It wasn’t unusual, but she knew he was still mad. And the fact that he was angry made her even more angry.

_She didn’t exist to be his fuck buddy! She had her own usefulness completely outside of warming his sleeping bag, and how dare he expect her to put that first above the rest! She knew he didn’t love her. She knew she was his only option. She knew none of this was real, none of it was true, it was all just convenient. It was all only temporary, anyway, everything in this world was, and how dare he put expectations on her. It’s not like he was her husband!_

By the time Tom came back to sling his towel over the clothesline, she was furious. The only greeting she would give him was an angry glare.

“Good morning to you, too,” Tom said. He’d never been rude to her, but the tone of his voice was not polite.

“You tried to take my place on the trip,” Tillie said, feeling like a bull and Tom was a giant red flag.

“Yes.” At least he didn’t deny it. “I did it to protect you.”

“And Mason put you in your place, thank God,” she snapped, turning to the wash she was trying to get done before she left.

“Because protecting you is…bad?” he asked, that same low-level, condescending, patronizing, sarcastic tone in his voice.

“I don’t need you to protect me…like _that,_ ” she returned. “In case you haven’t noticed, I have a bit of a reputation for never having encountered a Walker on a single guard duty or scavenging trip. Not once!”

“And you can’t take that for granted!” he argued. “That’s just foolish!”

“Oh, now I’m foolish,” she muttered, snapping the clothes to shake the excess water with more viciousness than required. “Well, I’m sorry the pickings are just so slim around here.”

He stilled, turned to her, and the look on his face was dangerous. “What does _that_ mean?”

She turned to him, trying to calm herself. She didn’t need to have a screaming match with Tom. It was bad enough they could be overheard anyway. Putting the whole group in danger was not an option. “Look, I get it. You have a good thing going and you don’t want to lose it, fine, that’s understandable. But it’s not going to be this way forever. You had to wait months before you came here, and if something happens, it will be a matter of time before someone else comes along.”

Tom’s eyes glittered, and his teeth clenched. In a low voice, he said, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” she said, “it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you have to be celibate for a bit, there are more women in the world, it’s just the matter of time, so I don’t see why you’re making such a big deal!”

He stared at her. She could see thoughts flying through his head, and whatever the slot machine landed on, the only words that came out of his mouth were:

“Is that what you think this is?”

She felt whatever rage had sustaining her leave like a wind blowing out a candle. All that was left was a deep sadness.

“Yes,” she answered. “I do.”

His face went blank for a moment, and then, he turned and walked away. She didn’t see him again before she left with Mason and Phillip that day.

Stuart, however, came to see them off.

“Here,” he said, handing her a rather large blade; it was nearly as big as a machete. It was in a leather sling that wrapped neatly around her waist. “Just in case. Although I somehow think you won’t need it.”

“At least someone has faith in me,” she murmured, her brain still on her argument with Tom.

“Yeah,” Stuart said, his voice low. “I know it isn’t any of my business, but I want to know if you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” she said automatically. “He’ll either get over it or he won’t.”

Her blasé attitude must have surprised him, from the way he was looking at her. “Not that I’m the president of Tom’s fan club, but,” he said, “it’s not like it’s unusual, for a guy to want to watch out for his woman. You two are still new, you can’t really blame him, everything is still fresh.”

Tillie shifted uncomfortably. The lie that Tom had genuine, deep, and romantic feelings for her made her want to lock down, close off, as if behind a brick wall. She wished she had a metal shell, like a robot. “It’s complicated,” was all she could mutter.

Recognizing a dismissal, Stuart nodded. He looked up, away, toward where Mason and Phillip were just about ready to head out and call for Tillie to join them. Mason was giving Noah some instructions, and Stuart glanced down at Tillie again. He must have seen something in her face, because he said, softly, “As long as you’re happy, you know. We all have to find some small piece of that to keep going. You are, aren’t you?”

She looked up at him, surprised. “Happy?” she echoed.

“Sometimes,” he started, his tone contemplative, “sometimes we think we want something, that it will make us happy…and we find out it doesn’t. Sometimes it takes more courage to stop than to start. Geeze…I sound like a fuckin’ walking cliché.” He snorted at himself in amusement.

She smiled at him, finding some kind of comfort in how he shuffled with embarrassment. “I appreciate it, Stuart,” she said. “I appreciate that you…that you care.”

She felt a flood of warmth in that moment. She had always liked Stuart, liked him more the longer she knew him. If Tom hadn’t come along….

No. She had to concentrate. Stuart knew that too.

“Well, you need to keep your head screwed on straight out there,” he said, nudging her in the direction of the others. “Stay too much in your own head and you might lose it.”

“I’ll keep my eyes open and my mouth shut,” she promised him. Mason waved at her to come, and Stuart gave her a little mock salute, which she returned before climbing into the back seat of the Rogue.

They drove for much longer than she thought. They went as far up as they could, even going through the broken gates to the areas that had been restricted in the Before. They took the road as far as it went, until it dead-ended and they had to get out and walk.

The hills were even steeper this far up, but Mason and Phillip seemed to know a path that wound through, keeping the incline from being too taxing. Then, it seemed they went over the top, and the incline became a decline.

The house lay in the middle of what looked like a giant square that had been cut into the side of the foothill. They weren’t high enough to be called mountains, but it was a considerable distance below. She could see the appeal instantly – there was a wall all around it, and the house inside…it was huge.

She had never been in a house so big.

Mason walked her around while Phillip made sure everything was still secure. “I want to have some idea of how we’re going to fit into this place,” Mason said. “The last thing I want is fighting over bedrooms, you know?”

“Well, as the leader, you should have the biggest one,” she pointed out.

“I don’t know if you’d use that word…”

“Yes,” she said, with a bit more force. “Quit dodging it, Mason. Maybe we don’t stand on formality but we all know you do it.”

“Well, I was thinking the master suite should be for two people,” Mason said.

“No,” she said, knowing where he was going. “There’s plenty of large rooms. You take that one.”

She picked out rooms for Fletcher (smaller, cozy), Leon (close to the kitchen but not too close), Stuart (almost as large as Mason’s, and close by) and even made few suggestions for Noah. There were still rooms left over, of which both he and Robert could take their pick. Phillip already had his eye on one, which she instantly recognized as perfect for him, and she picked out a double room for her and Tom.

Two rooms. Two beds. A door between them.

They sat in the large dining room. It wasn’t too high-ceilinged, but it was long, and the table stretched to seat twelve on each side, with one and the head and one at the food. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, but other than that, it was all in good shape.

“Okay,” Mason said, sitting at the head of the table as they ate their lunch – cold canned soup – “now’s the time when I let in you in on the secret.”

“Secret?” Tillie echoed, spoon half-way to her mouth.

“The reason we’ve been stalling,” Mason said. “We should have moved in here two or three weeks ago, but…well, there’s a small problem.”

“We think there’s another group in the hills,” Phillip said.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Noah picked it up,” Mason said. “Robert confirmed it. It’s taken us a while to be sure. Things being moved that weren’t moved by us. Signs of human activity. Others having scavenged things, when we knew there were more supplies. We can’t figure out how many of them there are, or where they are. We suspect that they might be more afraid of us than we are of them, because we’ve been trying to find them, but they are very well hidden. So we’ve stalled moving until we can be absolutely sure they aren’t a threat.”

“There’s more places for us to scavenge this way,” Phillip added. “Down the hill, a bit to the east, on this side. We’ve been pushing out, slowly. I have a few suspicions but we don’t want to cause any hostility. We’re taking it gently. Maybe they’ll figure out we can be trusted. Maybe they can be trusted, we don’t know yet.”

Tillie chewed her food carefully, mulling this information over. It was hard, finding other survivors. Even when Tom and Robert had shown up, they’d almost gotten shot. It wasn’t surprising, the maze of the upper hills would be ideal for people to hide in, if they knew it well enough. Could be some locals who got lucky?

“Who else knows?” she asked.

“The only ones who don’t are Tom, Leon, and Fletcher, and we’re going to announce it tonight,” Mason said. “Then we’re going to vote on if we should move here, in light of this information, or stay where we are.”

“They’ll vote to move,” Tillie said. “We’ve been anticipating it for so long.”

“Yeah, but the knowledge of more people might make some nervous. I know Stuart’s against it because of that, but he’s willing to support the group decision if it’s a go.” Mason looked to Phillip and back to her. “We do want this to happen, so we were hoping you could help sway Fletcher and Tom. And Stuart will be even more inclined to go if you want to.”

“And I take it you two want to?”

“I’m skeptical,” Phillip said, “but I think we have better chances here than where we are. Noah doesn’t care either way, truthfully, and neither does Robert. But even if they vote no, yes has the majority, if you say so.”

“Me? You think I have that much influence?”

“If you get Tom, Robert will probably follow, and I really think Fletcher will side with you. Elanora liked you a lot, and he knew that. So at least we have you, Fletcher, me and Phil,” Mason said. “Do you think Tom will side with you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s pissed at me for coming on this trip.”

“It’s not that, Tillie,” Mason sighed. “He’s worried. Look, I don’t want to sound like a sexist asshole, but in times like this, people go back to primitive instincts. And one of the most primitive instincts a man has is to fix things that are wrong. Mostly he does that by making sure nothing _does_ go wrong. And he does that by protecting those entrusted to his care. You can get your feathers all ruffled over that, fine, but you can’t ask him not to do it. Even Stu was a bit annoyed with me for wanting to drag you up here, and I know I got more than one disapproving look from Fletch.”

Tillie put down her spoon. Her meal was only half eaten, so she bent the lid back to preserve what was left. Protecting their territory, that was what men did, Mason was saying. And she was Tom’s territory because he was fucking her. That marked her. The thought made her lose her appetite. “And what’s a woman’s primitive instinct?” she asked.

“Hell if I know that,” Mason chuckled. “You’d be more apt to tell me.”

They finished up, and hiked back over the hill, down to the Rogue, which was still there, thankfully. Talk of there being someone else living up here had made Tillie worry that the car might be stolen, but Phillip assured her that those people were on the other side and unlikely to have come this far on this side.

It was the last hour of full daylight, just before twilight, when they returned to the camp. Tillie knew she had to keep her eyes open, but her brain kept wandering to Tom. _Why was she angry at him for protecting her?_

The only conclusion she could come to was that somehow…it was _false_.

If he loved her, then fine, he could shelter her all he wanted.

But if he didn’t love her, then she was…property. An object. Something being used.

_That_ was what pissed her off.

The only solution she could find was to break it off. But the thought of doing that created a high-pitched screaming in the back of her head, and a panic that went through her entire body like a slithering snake, starting in her bowels and working its way into her chest and then in the area behind her eyes.

Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.

However, when the Rogue came along the road at the edge of camp, Tom was the first one in the clearing, waiting for them. He looked a bit stricken, and then relieved and finally overjoyed when they got out of the car, safe and sound. Without waiting for any cue from her, he walked right up to her and wrapped her in his arms, pulling her tight to him.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said into her hair. She could feel the rapidness of his heartbeat against her ear, and the slight panting of his breath. She suddenly felt horrible for how she’d treated him. Regardless of exactly what he feelings were, he did care about her a lot, and she was important to him. Her arms went around him in return, and if he noticed her initial hesitation, he didn’t say anything.

“We’re going to gather at the central fire tonight,” Mason told Tom. “In an hour. Tell whoever you see, if we don’t get to them first.”

“News?” Tom asked her as he practically dragged her away, back to their tent.

“Yeah, I’ll let Mason announce it.”

“Can’t you tell me?”

“No.” She smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Tom,” she said. “I shouldn’t have been such an ass.”

“Consider it forgotten,” he said, pulling her tighter to him. He kissed her through her hair. “I’m just glad you’re back. I don’t think I would have been able to take it if this morning had been our last conversation.” She felt his pulse pick up again in his wrist, which was pressed against her tightly.

“Well,” she said with a tentative smile up at him, “my lucky streak still stands!”

“Thank God,” he murmured as they arrived. “I meant to give you this stuff earlier, but…well…” He let go, and went into the tent. When he emerged, he had something draped over his arm, and a small white box in his hand. “I found these on our trip,” he said. “I saw them in this little shop, and I wanted to bring them back to you.”

He handed her the fabric first. It was a dress, halter-style, white with a dense pattern of delicate blue and yellow flowers all over it. He held it up to her frame, eyes twinkling in the early evening light. “I thought it might fit you.”

She pressed the sides of the dress against her hips, measuring where the seams ended. It seemed that Tom was correct. “It’s so pretty, Tom,” she said, “but honestly, where am I going to wear it?”

“Maybe not down here,” he said, “but maybe up in the house?”

She nodded. She eyed the box in his hand, feeling a strange nervousness. “And that?”

He pulled off the lid. A delicate silver chain glinted in a cotton bed, and something orange winked up at them. Tom’s long fingers grasped the chain and he pulled it out so Tillie could see it clearly.

It was a little crystal O, and a charm that looked like a slice of orange.

“It made me think of you, instantly,” Tom said. “Your name. Otille Clementine.”

“It’s…it’s adorable,” Tillie said, her throat tightening. “Can you…put it on me?”

Tom slipped it around her neck and fastened the clasp. He straightened it on her skin and their eyes met.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

He bent over, kissing her sweetly. But the sweetness quickly turned into something else.

“Maybe,” he murmured into her ear, “you could try the dress on…just for size?”

She knew what he meant.


	6. The Eye of the Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tillie does a few things she’s not supposed to do, and tells Tom a bit about her past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late. If I get some more nice comments I will update again this weekend. I need to keep ahead of myself, though, because when I don't have a chapter ready I wind up taking a month or more to update. Like with my other fics. One is on the verge. The other languishes. 
> 
> Anyway, this chapter is important but also a bit of a place holder. You get to see a bit more into Tillie's head.

Tillie had always heard about make-up sex, touted like some mythical experience that couldn’t be matched. She wasn’t quite sure what she had just experienced qualified – because she was pretty sure Tom was still pissed at her.

She was still in the dress Tom had brought. In her canvas seat, with Tom sitting in front of her. She had her legs crossed, however, and resting over one of his shoulders.

They were twenty minutes late for the meeting.

Something in how he’d touched her, or maybe it was how he looked at her, even in the middle of the most intimate act two human beings could share—

Yes. He was still angry. She could even feel it in the tension of his shoulders, under her knee.

And in the perverse reversal of events, she was more under his spell than ever.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

She shoved these thoughts out of her head as she focused on Mason’s announcement. The group took it in silence, and then, Tom spoke.

“Another group?”

Something in his tone…it made a strange sensation unfold in her chest, a thing with tentacles that reached to the farthest parts of her.

Another group.

Fair chance there would be women in it.

Mason started to ask for the vote. He turned to her, having agreed that it would be, “Ladies first.” He wanted her to influence others.

She couldn’t do it. Something in her clamped down and the word “yes” would not leave her lips.

“I think,” she said, her voice trembling no matter how she struggled to steady it, “that we shouldn’t vote yet.”

She felt all eight pairs of eyes rivet on her.

“It’s just,” she said, demurely, her eyes on her hands, in her lap, “it’s a lot of information to take in. People need to think.”

She couldn’t look at Mason. He would be angry, and hiding it. She couldn’t look at Stuart, who would be confused, disappointed…or maybe he would just know. He would just see through her. And she couldn’t look at Noah, whose sneer she could _feel_ across the circle.

“Okay then,” Mason said, that old unflappable attitude as dependable as ever. “Then we’ll vote tomorrow. Think about it.”

He’d made it clear he didn’t think the group was dangerous. Just that they were apparently trying to survive and stay out of the way, like their own group was. People didn’t seem worried, just curious.

They would probably still vote yes, she told herself. She hadn’t ruined it.

The group started to break up. Thank God Tom was on watch that night. He followed her back to their tent and attempted to talk to her but she insisted he go, because the meeting had left the camp unguarded.

“We _will_ talk about this when I come back, _I don’t care_ what time of the night it is,” he warned her before leaving.

She went into the tent, yanked off the dress, put on her clothes. Then she realized she hadn’t washed yet that night, and somehow, sprinkling herself with water just didn’t seem good enough.

Nobody was allowed down in the reservoir after dark. The watch circle of the camp didn’t cover that far down, and they agreed, as a rule, that nobody would go down there after sunset. But she decided to go anyway, needing a dunk.

After all, once they were up in the house, God-knew what they were going to do for water. Solar power brought electricity, but it didn’t turn on the water purifying plants, didn’t make the faucets work, didn’t pump the water into the house. She hadn’t even though to bring that up – Mason must have a plan. They’d told her about the hot water. Where was it going to come from?

She told herself it was a matter of time before she didn’t have the luxury of the expanse of the reservoir, but she knew it was a lame excuse because she wasn’t particularly attached to bathing outside, in nature.

She was hiding. Plain and simple.

It occurred to her that if they couldn’t find her, they might raise the alarm. Of course, they also might know she didn’t want to be found. Or they might not care of she got chomped, she had spoiled their plan, after all.

Surprisingly, relaxing in the night-chilled water helped her forget these things. It helped calm her brain. It washed away the residue of the day – and of Tom – and soothed her.

Everything about her felt backwards. Reversed. She became more attached to a man the more viciously she treated him. The colder her world, the more tranquil she felt inside.

Cold. Like death.

Sometimes she felt like she already was a Walker. Maybe that’s why they didn’t come around her. They already had her.

The cold helped numb these thoughts. She pretended she was one of them…mindless, empty, decaying. No movement, unless acted upon. She forced her brain to still, become a blank, steady line. She even felt her heartbeat slow.

Then, after some time with this, she looked up. The stars were so brilliant and colorful, with no city lights to obscure them.

Then she saw it. Things twinkling, streaking through in long lines, sparkling and then going out. Winking at her.

The sky was speaking.

_Meteors_ , she thought.

It went on for fifteen, twenty minutes, getting stronger, getting brighter, and then slowly, fading out, until the sky was still again. She could feel a strange vertigo, as if she could see the dome tilting, turning, showing her time itself. She could feel everything, every movement, the Earth traveling through space at its incredible speed, spinning on its axis, revolving around the sun, so much movement ---

She stood in the very center. A hurricane around her, and she was the eye of the universe.

There was a prickle on the back of her neck. Someone was watching her. The spell shattered, and she looked to the trees, but saw no one. Heard nothing.

She suddenly realized how painfully cold she was. She slid out of the water, trying hard not to splash, dried herself off quickly and pulled on her clothes, grateful she’d brought her extra sweatshirt. Of course, when she put it on, she realized in the dark she had grabbed Tom’s hoodie, and his smell was all around her again.

Disgruntled, she started to make her way back up to camp. She avoided where she knew Tom would be canvasing, but she didn’t anticipate the soft, familiar voice, calling to her from the dark.

“Tillie?”

“Hey Fletch,” she replied.

“What are you doing down here, by yourself?” he asked as the outline of him came into view.

“Wanted a bath,” she said with a shrug.

She heard a breathy, rueful chuckle. “That’s right. Seems like the Walkers don’t come near you. Sure you want to flaunt fortune like that, Til?”

_It’s not fortune_ , she thought dully. “Can’t see any reason not to.”

Fletched grunted. “Yeah. I know that feeling. How long you been down there?”

“Since about when duty started.”

He let out a low whistle. “That long? _Geeze_ …surprised you’re not an icicle. We’re almost done with our shift.”

Holy…she’d been in that water for _three hours_? Maybe she _did_ see the world shift.

“Did you decide about if we should move?” he asked her.

“I think we should do it,” she said without thinking. “I saw it today. It’s pretty fantastic. And whoever those other people are, we’d be in a better position to deal with them there, rather than out here in the open.”

“Unless they want to take what’s ours,” Fletcher said.

“If they wanted that house they would have taken it already.”

“Guess you did some pretty heavy thinking down there, then.”

“Yeah. For some reason the cold helps.”

“Hm. Well, you’d best get on up to bed, young lady. If you’re not there when Tom gets back, I’m pretty sure he will be – how do those Brits put it? _Buggered?_ ”

“That means worn out. Or screwed. But he would probably give me an _ear-bashing_ if I’m not there. Tell me to _get stuffed_.”

Fletcher giggled. “He will definitely think you’re _as mad as a bag of ferrets_ if he finds out you went down there at this time of night. So off with you now.”

She was slightly cheered by their conversation, and when Tom joined her shortly after she’d crawled into her bag, he was surprised to find her very much awake.

“Do you think we should go?” he asked her plainly.

“Yes,” she said. “I just had to give it some thought.”

“So you weren’t sure. Let’s, for argument’s sake, say you went the other way. What would your reasons have been?”

She stared up at the roof of the tent. Tom had lain down next to her, rolled onto his side, head propped up on his hand.

“We don’t know who these people are,” she said. “And I just find it a tiny bit suspicious that they haven’t tried to meet us. But it could be because they’ve encountered unfriendlies and are understandably worried. I mean, we are a group of rather burly men.”

He chuckled. “ _Burly_ isn’t the world I would use to describe you.”

She smiled at the empty flirtation. “Ultimately I think they’re more afraid of us than we are of them. That could make them more dangerous, though.”

“I think we could handle it,” he said.

She toyed with her necklace. She hadn’t taken it off during her bath, and it had become icy cold in the water. She wondered what kind of metal it was. Usually cheap metal made her skin turn green. She’d found this out when she was a young teenager….

“Did I ever tell you that I used to wear a purity ring?”

She felt Tom’s discomfort. She turned her head to look at him, and gave him a reassuring smile before going on.

“When I was thirteen, my mom took me to our church and I was put in this group, all of us about the same age. We took a vow that we wouldn’t have sex until we got married. I was confused, because at the time, sex was still something that was kinda mysterious and, well… kinda gross. I was a bit of a late bloomer, didn’t start my period until I was sixteen. Anyway, they gave us all a ring, and said it was a sign of our promise. And in a few days, my finger was green from the metal.”

“Cheap metal,” Tom said.

“I took it as a sign,” she giggled. “But you know the weirdest thing? I had this strange desire to become a nun.”

“A nun?” He almost choked.

“I know, right? The Baptist girl becoming a nun. I never told my mother because she would have had a cow. She _hated_ Catholics…said they worshipped Mary and followed a guy in a funny hat, and ignored the Bible. Said they were all going to hell. Dad would wink at me when she would have her fits and I always got the feeling he knew things she didn’t, but he never told me. I found a few books in his library after he died. I kept one of them…I think I still have it in my stuff, I’ve never brought it out.”

Tom made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, indicating he was still listening.

“I thought it was weird because I thought you had to be a virgin to be a nun, and if my ring turned green, I thought it was some kind of sign that I wasn’t going to be a virgin for very long. Of course, I was for a very long while…you were my first, and I’m forty. I was _literally_ the forty-year-old-virgin.”

“We’re funny when we’re young. I thought I wanted to be a barrister at one point.”

“Yeah. But I couldn’t have kids, so I didn’t think I was supposed to get married, and I had no idea what was going to happen to me. I just felt like I was drifting along most of my life. And then… _this_ happened.” She made a brief circular motion with her hand.

Silence descended between them. “So…what made you think of that?”

“I guess…I was just hoping that this adorable necklace you gave me doesn’t turn my skin green,” she managed, holding back a chuckle.

He smiled at her, his teeth briefly visible in the dark. Like the Cheshire grin. “Well, I think it’s silver. That’s what the stand said, that it came from.”

“Oh, well, good then.” She took in a deep breath, and let it out. “In the morning Mason will probably want to talk to me. I think he’s annoyed I put off his vote.”

“Mason will forgive you. He likes you.”

“I hope so.” _Or Stuart will make him_ , she thought. “Okay, well, we’d better go to sleep.”

She dreamed that night that she was wearing a green robe, a green veil, and she was in a tent as big as a church, and everything was so cold she could see her breath. But as she looked up at the top of the tent, the folds parted, and she could see the sky full of stars, shifting and rolling, as if they were inside a huge kaleidoscope.


	7. Do You Love Me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Stuart is really starting to worry about Tillie, the group makes a decision, and a conversation goes sideways.

Tillie heard a ripping sound behind her, almost like an angry insect. She jumped a mile out of her skin and turned around, seeing it was only Stuart behind her, with a roll of duct tape. She was the last one at the breakfast table, having slept in because of her late night, and Stuart was the only other one in the dining area while she scraped up the remains of the breakfast Leon had left for her.

“You okay, Til?” Stuart asked, seeing her startle.

“Yeah, yeah,” she assured him, catching her breath. “You just…just scared me, is all.”

A memory floated before her. The woman who taught the purity class, holding a roll of duct tape, the sound of her stripping a piece of it, making them all wince as it echoed off the tile of the floor.

 _We get attached to people we are intimate with,_ the woman said, holding up the strip of tape before them, between her finger and thumb. _Sex is the most intimate thing there is. It creates a bond_. She slapped the tape to her own arm. _And when you break that bond, it dulls the tape._ She ripped it from her skin, making them all wince. _You don’t want to be a used piece of tape, do you?_

_Do you?_

“Tillie, are you sure you’re okay?” Stuart asked her. “You’re awfully jumpy today.”

“Maybe it’s a guilty conscience,” she muttered.

Stuart looked down at what he was doing – using the tape to patch up the buckets they used for water, holding the cracks tight so they wouldn’t leak. “You weren’t wrong,” he said.

“How mad was Mason?” she asked.

Stuart shook his head. “Don’t worry yourself about it. It is something people need to think about. That’s the kind of leader Mason needs to be, _should_ be. Not someone who manipulates others into doing what he wants.”

“He’s a good leader, Stu,” Tillie said softly.

“Yeah. I know.” He paused, shifting the roll of duct tape – the last one they had – from one hand to the other. “Tillie, I know I ain’t your dad, but…” He looked at her, worry clear on his face. “You ain’t been right for a bit now. Not since you took up with Tom. You’re different. Is he treating you right?”

Her muscles slackened. Poor Stuart…he didn’t understand. Tom wasn’t the villain here. “Yes, Stuart, I promise he is,” she said earnestly. “He’s shown me nothing but respect.”

He didn’t deserve how she was treating him. As if antagonizing him, trying to prove her control over him. When had she become that way?

Stuart was right. She didn’t used to be this way.

“You can tell me, you know,” Stuart said, gently, his tone level and smooth. Inviting her confidence. “If anything has happened. I don’t care what it is. You are safe here. I promise.”

She nodded, feeling the prick of tears in her eyes. “I know, Stu. I appreciate it. And I promise you, you don’t have to worry about how Tom treats me. He’s as good as gold. I mean,” she gave a nervous little chuckle, “he tried to take my spot on a scouting mission because he thought it was too dangerous.”

“I know that didn’t sit well with you.”

“No. I’m not used to… _being_ with someone. I mean, we all interdepend on each other, yeah, but…I never have done this, not in my whole life. I’ve never had a relationship with someone and I guess I’m having trouble…adjusting.” She rested her head on her hand, no longer interested in her scraps.

“Okay, I’m not going to keep asking,” Stuart said. “But you give me one word, one signal, _a wink_ , that you need to get away, and I won’t hesitate.”

She smiled at him, but it didn’t meet her eyes. “Thank you, Stu.”

He nodded at her with a small, returning smile, and went about his business elsewhere. She cleaned her plate, and went about her daily chores.

She was going to be better. She was going to stop being this brooding mess and appreciate what she had, what she’s been given.

If it killed her.

That night, the group voted, and almost unanimously, everyone decided to move to the house. The only hold-out was Stuart, who eventually put his hand up when everyone else voted “Yes,” so technically it wasn’t “almost.”

It took much less time to pack and move than Tillie thought it would. Mostly, it was because many of the things they’d needed in camp, they would not need in the house. Tillie’s poles and shower curtain, her rug, even her canvas chairs, were not necessary. Sure, her clothes and the books and miscellaneous things were going, but a lot of their stuff was for shelter and basic needs, all of which the house would now provide.

Mason took them in two waves. Stuart, Noah, Fletcher, and Robert stayed behind with the rest of what gear they chose to take while Tom, Tillie, Leon, Phillip, and Mason went up in the first wave. After they carried their things to the house, which would probably take two trips, Mason would drive back down to get the other four men, and bring up the rest of the stuff. The first trip left only a few hours after daylight, and Mason returned by noon. By the time the sun was going down, they were all in their house.

It was almost too fast. To be living outside, off the land in the morning, and in a very nice room with an actual mattress and sheets for a bed? Of course, a lot of cleaning was required – the house had gotten a thick layer of dust and grime from disuse, but everyone focused on their own sleeping area and there were sheets kept in linen closets throughout the house, so by bedtime, everyone was in a clean bed.

Everyone was too exhausted to worry about anything other than sleeping that night. The house went dead quiet around nine, according to Tillie’s internal clock. She knew in the morning Leon would be going at the kitchen, marveling at the fact that the fridge still worked, being powered by the solar light panels on the roof. She found out that the water came from a complex system of pipes that led into a well – which gave the water a strange taste, quite frankly, but Leon seemed confident that boiling it, as he was going to continue to do, would make it taste just like the lake water they’d survived on.

While everyone else, slept, though, she lay awake.

It felt wrong, being in this bed with Tom. In a bed, it gave a kind of…legitimacy to their situation, a reality that somehow she’d been avoiding.

Side by side, in two sleeping bags, in a tent, for some reason, hadn’t felt like this. But lying on the same mattress, under the same blanket, his body curled around hers as he softly inhaled and exhaled in deep sleeping breaths…

It was a lie.

By midnight, she knew she wasn’t going to get any sleep like this. She slipped out, knowing Tom was too zonked to be disturbed by her movements. She didn’t turn on any lights, having spent too much time maneuvering through the dark in the open, surrounded by trees and brush and plants, to be bothered by having to do it through the unfamiliar hallways of a house. This high up, there was a lot of unfiltered light coming through the windows. The full moon, the stars, and the dim solar lights that surrounded the compound gave her just enough to see by.

There was a huge main room, filled with furniture that was a bit too fancy for a living room. It was obviously some kind of reception room, as the dining room was more for a contingent of ambassadors than it was for a family. But the couches were soft and inviting, even if they were a bit dusty and creaky, and it didn’t bother her to lie down on one and stare out the window.

She was like this for an hour when she felt the same prickle she’d felt the night before, when she was bathing in Lake Hollywood far past the time she should have been. She was being watched.

She looked around, but saw nothing. Her eyes, adjusted to the dim light, could see much better now. Nothing moved in the shadows, nothing moved in the faint light coming in through the windows. Several minutes passed, and the feeling didn’t change. Before, she had headed back to her tent, but being here, in this place that was not yet familiar, she felt more afraid to move.

The tension started to become painful. Eventually, she couldn’t take it, and started to get up off the couch. Then, by the doorway, a figure moved.

“You okay, Tillie?”

Noah. This did not make her feel relieved.

“Fine,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“On guard duty,” he said. Of course, someone was _always_ on guard duty. “What are you doing out here?”

“Can’t sleep,” she replied. She wanted him to go away but she was terrified of him leaving her sight. She suddenly very much wanted to know where he was, at all times.

“Ah. Well, first night in a new place can be like that.” Noah crossed the doorway, continuing on his rounds. “Let me know if you see anything you shouldn’t.”

 _I see you_ , she thought, and the words almost came out of her mouth, but she caught them, biting them back just in time. “Okay,” was all she said.

“Nite.”

When he was gone, she felt the prickle fade. She knew he had moved on. Had he been watching her before that? She couldn’t be sure. The only thing that told her was instinct, and in this world, instinct was life or death. But with no proof, she couldn’t very well go to Mason. Yet, she had a feeling that if she _did_ go to Mason, he would listen.

She leaned back against the couch, feeling the tension leave her in a whoosh. Then, explicably, she felt too tired to move, and so sleepy, she just wanted to shut her eyes for a few minutes---

\---and was woken to full daylight, with Tom gently shaking her.

“Otille,” he said, repeating her name several times until she was awake and looking at him. “What are you doing out here?” He looked confused, and not a little worried.

He was kneeling in front of her, and she realized she had fallen asleep in a sitting position on the couch, her head on the back, and as she lifted it, her neck was stiff and sore and angry from being kept in such a position for hours on end. She winced, grasping it. In a flash, Tom was beside her, his hands on her shoulders, his fingers working the muscles of her neck.

“Couldn’t…sleep,” she managed as her aching body came awake.

“I was alone and I got worried, I know you weren’t on duty tonight.”

 _Noah was_ , she thought. It was fresh in her mind as if it just happened. Yet, she didn’t want to tell Tom. But he was doing such a good job working out the knots in her neck that she pressed against him, moving her head back and forth to help her flexibility.

“Figured you’d enjoy the extra room,” she teased, tossing him a small smile. He returned it. But she decided to press on. “You know, we don’t have to sleep in the same bed. I mean, outside we were in the same tent but kept our own sleeping bags. And we have two rooms, side by side, there’s a bed in both. We could each take one.”

His fingers stilled. “You don’t want to share a bed?”

“Well, it’s not necessary,” she pointed out, turning to him as his hands fell away. This wasn’t the conversation with him she’d been planning to have, but it took her mind off the creep-fest with Noah and her fear that maybe she was ignoring something that was going to turn into a problem. “And it’s not a big deal, we’re right beside each other.”

“Yeah, but…” he shook his head, looked puzzled. “I mean, we’re together, right?”

“Yeah, so? People sleep in separate beds all the time, for a lot of reasons.”

He looked at her, hard, studying her in that intense, scrutinizing way of his. “Is there a reason you don’t want to share a bed with me, Otille?”

Did she want to tell him that? Did she even _know_? “Is it a big deal to you?” she asked, volleying it back at him.

“Well, I just—” he was flustered, struggling. She resisted the urge to feel guilty. This wasn’t about hurting him, she told herself. This was about giving him some room.

“I told you about how I was raised,” she said, suddenly finding the words. “This whole situation… it goes against a lot of things that were deeply ingrained into me. And I know this is weird because we’ve had sex, many times, and somehow sharing a bed is bugging me. It doesn’t seem like such a big thing, but I guess…out where we were, it didn’t feel as intense as it does when we’re in bed together. Lying together in the same space, in a traditional bedroom, in a room designed for…well, for what we do. It makes me uncomfortable.”

His face…it went from shocked to outright hurt, and then he seemed to remember it wasn’t all about him and tried to reel that hurt in. “For what we do? Beds aren’t just for sex, they’re for sleeping. All we’ve done so far is sleep.”

“And I can’t sleep,” she said with a shrug. “Because it bothers me.”

“And it didn’t bother you outside?”

“N…” she almost said no. Almost. Did it bother her there? Out there, it felt more…exceptional, like the situation was more out of the ordinary. Here, it felt…

She didn’t understand the difference, ultimately. It was cosmetic, at best.

“I guess here I can’t lie to myself as easily,” she heard herself say, and then realized she’d spoken her thought out loud.

“Lie?” His voice rose a bit, got more intense.

She looked at him as he stood up, feeling remarkably serene for having just opened the door to a very ugly conversation. So, with a small sigh, she stood up and faced him, her stance not defensive but open, hands spread as she spoke.

“Tom, I think you’re taking all of this too seriously.”

“And now we’re back to this,” he said, his ire rising. “You said this to me before you left. You said this was just an arrangement, that I was with you because you were the only choice.”

“It’s true,” she said plainly.

“And that’s what you think of me.” The ire was replaced with hurt. “You think I’m that kind of person, that I would do that sort of thing!”

“Please,” she said, holding up her hands. “I don’t mean to insult you—”

“Well you are!” He didn’t shout it, but he said it in such a way that it felt like a slap.

“Seriously, what am I supposed to think?” she demanded, starting to feel the first sparks of anger. “I am literally the only woman in the group! You cannot expect me to believe that if there had been someone else here who was much more attractive than me, or younger, or whatever, you would be with her, not me. Now, I’m not judging you for that, for being a man who needs a companion, someone to be available to them for sexual gratification—”

His hands went into the air and they grabbed his hair. He shut his eyes, as if desperate to keep himself from having an apoplectic fit. He drew several heavy breaths, and then his eyes opened and he stared her down as his fingers slowly released his hair.

“All right, then let’s say, for the sake of your argument, that this is true. You were the only female in a group of men for some time, months before I came along. And yet when I arrived, you weren’t with _any of them_. Now, having learned what I have about you these last few days, I have to ask _why_ – is it that you didn’t _want_ any of them? And don’t tell me it’s because of how you were raised, because when I came along, you wanted _me_ – you gave your full consent to this situation. So what does that say about you? Why me, and not any of them? When I know there are at least three or four here who would eagerly have you.”

 _Three or four_? She jerked in surprise.

“But you picked _me_. Why? Because you had some obsession with me, because you thought I was the best looking, because I reminded you of better times, because I was some fantasy and you imposed some image on me? Whatever it really is, I haven’t pushed you to admit it. But if I am using you, Tillie, aren’t you using me as well?”

“I have other choices,” she said. “And I picked you. At least it wasn’t forced.”

“You think I was _forced_ to pick you? Have you not heard there’s this thing we men do call masturbation?” In his anger, the smirk on his face was almost cruel.

“Don’t be gross,” she muttered.

“But my point stands. I am not some sex addict that has to have a woman available to him.” Suddenly he ducked away, and she saw his eyes get glassy, and a knife of guilt stabbed at her. “You lost everything, didn’t you? So did I. Some of us don’t deal with that very well. Having someone with us…someone who cares about us, someone we care about…you have to hold on to something, Tillie. You have to have some comfort.”

 _Just because_ , she thought.

He looked at her again, and she wanted to embrace him, he just looked so lost and filled with pain. “I connected to you. For whatever reason, there doesn’t have to be one, not really. You made me feel connected to something. Do we really have time to overanalyze it? Do we have to limit it with labels?”

“That’s sounds…exactly like something someone would say so they could just keep fucking and not worry about the consequences.”

There was a shift in Tom’s face. As if she’d gotten him. As he couldn’t argue. As if he was just hearing what he said. Then they stared at each other. At an impasse.

“You’re very important to me, Otille,” Tom said, reaching out and curling his finger underneath the charm at her throat. “I like you.”

“Do you love me, Tom?” she dared to ask. Why she suddenly felt the need to know, when she already knew the answer….

“Do you love me?” he replied.

It was a fair question. Her answer was silence.

He sighed. “If it makes you feel better, we can sleep in separate beds. But…do you want to end this? Between us?”

Did she? At this moment, she didn’t know. Before, she had been sure that she didn’t, but now…

As she looked at Tom’s face, she felt so sorry for him. She wanted to comfort him. And he wasn’t wrong, she was just as guilty as he was of taking advantage of a situation. She had never really thought that she had him over a barrel, but in a strange way, she did.

“No,” she said. “Not yet. I just need some time. To adjust to this…” she gestured around her.

He nodded, bent and kissed her cheek. “There’s breakfast,” he said. “We got fresh eggs this morning. Do you want to go?”

She nodded. Then, as if in some kind of apology, she grasped his hand, which was still at her throat, toying with the charm. She held it in her own, firmly. They walked this way to the dining room, to eat their first dinner together, with the group, in this big house that was their new home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am about to run out of chapters to post, lol.
> 
> Next up -- SOMEBODY DIES.


	8. The Smell of Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which someone important dies.

It seemed that none of the group was adjusting much better than Tillie.

Most of them had taken their chairs out onto the huge grounds. There was a wall surrounding the house and enclosing land, giving the whole thing the feeling of a huge compound. Nearer to the house there was a smaller, inner gate made of black iron, and inside this yard was where they chose to gather. There was a pit where fires had been burned some while ago, but Mason didn’t want a fire close to the house. There was a built-in electric grill, and Leon took to it right away, cooking outdoors the first few nights. Eventually Mason was worn down and a small fire, strictly for aesthetic purposes, was lit in the pit, and they sat around it, talking and enjoying their new surroundings. He made sure himself that it was out before anyone went to bed.

They did not take to well to the luxurious decorations of the house. They seemed to walk around like it was someone else’s, afraid to touch things. They hadn’t even all explored all the rooms, sticking instead to what felt more immediately comfortable – usually their own bedrooms. They were too quiet in the dining room, even though there was room for all of them now to sit and eat and talk. Things felt far away, so instead they decided to drag a table into the kitchen which was big enough to sustain it, and sat there for their meals instead. Leon even seemed to enjoy the company.

A week passed as they adjusted. Tom seemed to be the most comfortable, as he had found the library, and spent nearly every spare moment in it, sifting through the many, many books that were there. He would ask Tillie to join him whenever he had the chance, and she did, at times. They talked about what was there, what was interesting. They sat together on two of the large, luxurious reading chairs with a small lamp on between them when it got dark, and Tom would read to her from their old copy of Anna Karenina, while she followed from the newer copy that the library had held. As usual, he made her read her part, and she gradually grew more comfortable with this.

They slept in separate beds, like he promised. By the end of the week Tom had kissed her as they were walking back to their double room, his kiss asking a question. She said yes, but this time it was she who slipped out when they were done and returned to her own bed.

The next evening, as they all sat together outside, eating the venison burgers that Leon had made – they’d shot a deer a few days earlier, and Leon finally made the bread thick enough to pass for hamburger buns, even though there was still no yeast – Mason announced that Stuart and Noah were going to go down into the opposite direction and see what they could scavenge. It was supposed to only be a look-and-see trip, and when they scouted what was available, a larger group would go to collect in the Nissan Rogue.

It was new territory, and all were nervous, but both Stuart and Noah seemed confident, as they had explored the area, and Robert as well, when they had been scouting the house. There were some Walkers, there were always Walkers, but not in large groups, and as long as the humans were quiet, the Walkers weren’t terribly aggressive.

“So what’s out there?” Tom asked Robert after they’d seen Noah and Stuart off.

“More houses, some shops,” Robert said. “Things have been pretty well looted, but there’s usually something hiding.”

“I wonder if we’re going to continue going house to house like we were,” Tillie mused.

“That does seem to turn up the most useful items,” Robert agreed.

Now that they were in a place where there was electricity, the largest appliances were used early in the morning, when the sunlight was brightest. The washer and dryer, tucked into a small room on the far end of the house away from the large, bright gathering rooms and bedrooms, ran for a few hours nearly every day. Tillie adopted this task herself, relishing how much easier it was. She sorted everyone’s clothes, she determined what loads needed what settings, and then returned things, warm and dry, by mid-afternoon.

“The world ends…and I become a laundress,” she laughed to herself later that morning as she put Mason’s shirts on his bed.

She had never been much for this sort of thing in the time Before. But now, routines were comforting. They gave a sense of normalcy that was desperately needed. She marveled at times at how Leon was able to feed them with such variety, and then she realized he was doing the same thing – clinging to the little things that kept them all sane.

Once her chores were done, the day was hers – Tom had guard duty so she was alone in the library for a bit, snooping through the nooks and crannies to see what treasures she could unearth that were not on the bookshelves. There was a restlessness that seized upon her, and even though she found some interesting things, she didn’t move anything, didn’t take anything back to her room. Then, getting bored with the library, she went on to explore the rest of the house.

She ran across the others in the house – Fletcher was in what must have been the game room, playing billiards with himself. He offered to teach her and she promised she would let him, but not yet. Phillip, Robert, and Mason were having a small council in the large dining room, talking about the potential people living close by and wondering how to sniff them out without starting any kind of fight. They didn’t want to scare them off, ultimately, but see if they wanted to join up. With Elanora’s death, Mason seemed to have developed an urge to expand the group, worried they’d get picked off, one by one if they were too small. Besides, the house had more rooms – there was plenty to share. Better that than to be competitors.

Tillie listened in a bit, not hiding her presence – and they didn’t seem to mind it – before moving on. She wound up in the very front part of the house, where the large main doors opened onto a spacious driveway that snaked down the slope of the foothill, becoming a dirt road that let out into an inconspicuous exit onto the main drag. She didn’t walk out the front door, but instead explored the large foyer – there was a statue in front of the intricate staircase, and it reminded her of something…

It was tall and slender, made of pale-golden marble. The base was very rectangular but towards the top it became the shape of a woman, holding a child. It was all angles, but delicate and lovely, and she couldn’t help but be captivated by it.

If she didn’t know any better, she would guess it was a Madonna and Child.

_Mary-worshipping papists_ , came her mother’s voice in her head. Tillie shook it off. She had always found it made a lot of sense to her, the honor that Catholics gave to Mother Mary. The thought that Jesus would take Moses and Elijah up into heaven – as evidenced by the fact they had appeared with him at the Transfiguration -- but not the woman who gave birth to him? It made no sense. Besides, he’d spent thirty years with his mother and only three on his mission. Anyone who spent that much time directly in Jesus’ presence had to be pretty special.

Tillie sat with her back to the large door, knowing it was locked and secure behind her. They hadn’t come in by the front, but instead through a path in the back, and found their way around the gate, securing it from intruders once they were all living inside. She sat there for a long time, watching the sun descend, watching the shadows get longer, and most of all, watching that beautiful statue sit still and silent.

Stuart and Noah were due back that evening, before sunset. When the last of the sloping sunbeams disappeared from the foyer floor, she got up and went to find them, suddenly curious about what they had to share. She hoped Tom wouldn’t fight her on it when she volunteered to go on the scavenging mission.

But as she came out into the smaller yard, she found a bunch of them, Mason and Tom and Phillip and Fletcher, standing around with frowns on their faces. Robert was coming in through the iron gate.

“No sign,” he said.

“Of what?” Tillie asked.

“We can’t panic,” Mason said, and it sounded a bit like he was talking to himself as well as them, “they could have gotten holed up somewhere. They may have found something or gone too far in their investigating because something seemed promising. It’s happened before.”

“Where are Stuart and Noah?” Tillie asked, reaching Mason’s elbow.

“They aren’t back yet,” Fletcher told her.

“And we aren’t going to worry yet,” Mason said, a bit louder. “Phil, make sure someone is on watch tonight. They could just be late. They could show up first light tomorrow. We have to be patient.”

“Should we send someone?” Tom asked.

“Send someone and risk them not coming back, too?” Fletcher said.

“There’s no reason to worry yet,” Mason said, a little more forcefully. “Just give it until tomorrow sundown. If they’re not back then…I’ll take Robert and he and I will go investigate.”

Tom grasped Tillie’s arm. “It’s okay,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“You’re pale,” he pointed out. “And you look like you’re going to faint.”

“Do I?” She let him walk her over to their canvas chairs and sit her down. He brought her some water, and went to ask Leon for some food.

“It’ll be okay, Tillie,” Fletcher assured her. “Stuart and Noah know how to handle Walkers, and they took the guns with them. We would have heard something if there were problems, sound carries pretty far in these hills. And nobody on guard duty reported hearing gunshots.”

“They would only have used the guns in extreme emergencies – maybe not even until it was too late,” Tillie said, suddenly very cold.

“Here, dinner is ready,” Tom said, returning with steaming hot bowl of Leon’s stew – this night it was some kind of egg-drop with dumplings Leon had fashioned from the dough. The hens were working out pretty well, although Mason hadn’t gone after the rooster yet.

Tillie took it, but she barely sipped at it. Around her, more gathered with their bowls, having been called for dinner. Twilight passed, and others chattered anxiously, but as she looked across the fire they’d lit, she could see that Mason was barely eating, either. Tom tried to keep her attention, and flitted around her the entire night—at least until it was time for him to take his own guard shift – as if he were afraid she was going to collapse. Perhaps if she’d seen her own pinched, pale expression, she might have understood.

Sleep that night was impossible. She wanted to go on watch but Mason wouldn’t let her. He insisted she go to bed. She almost went at him for being sexist, but the real fear she saw in his face made her stop.

“I know, Tillie,” he said as she argued with him during the shift change. “I’m worried, too.” Then he went to take his shift and watch for his brother.

“They’re going to be fine, Tillie,” Tom said, coming in from his own shift on watch. He dragged her back to his room, even when she said she wasn’t in the mood, and insisted that she lie down. He promised he wasn’t trying to do anything, he just wanted her to settle. He rubbed her back as they lay on the bed.

“I don’t give a fuck about Noah,” Tillie grumbled. “It’s Stuart I’m worried about.”

“I know,” Tom said. “I know you and Stuart are close.”

“Not just that, but I don’t trust Noah,” she said, turning to him.

Tom stared down at her, startled by this new information. “I know there’s no love lost between you, but…you don’t think he’d do anything to Stuart, do you? I mean, we all depend on each other. Hurting Stuart? Our leader’s twin brother? It’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

She shook her head, and wondered if she should tell him about the times she caught Noah watching her. Slowly, it came out, in stuttered bits and starts, and even to her own ears it just sounded silly and paranoid, but to Tom’s credit, he listened without laughing or diminishing her concern.

“I know it was him both times,” she finished. “It’s just a feeling. Maybe you think I’m crazy—”

“No. I just…I can’t imagine Noah really doing anything. He’s hard but I never thought he was dangerous. Mason seems to trust him. Didn’t Stuart always tell us that Mason’s never been wrong?”

That thought hadn’t occurred to her in a while. “I hope you’re right. Mason puts a lot of faith in things like that, and I just hope it pays off.”

“He’s the one to point out how you’ve never had to fight off a Walker,” Tom said.

“Then he needs to let me go with the search party, if there is one,” Tillie mumbled.

Tom opened his mouth and she could clearly see he was going to tell her that was the last thing he wanted to see happen, but wisely didn’t argue. Eventually, his gentle ministrations got to her doze lightly, but she woke up just as light was beginning to fill the sky and a terrible feeling filled her gut.

She could hear the vibration of footsteps moving heavily through the house. She jerked out of bed, waking Tom, who had been in a much deeper sleep than her, and he was too groggy to keep up with her and she went running to find whoever it was. She made it outside, and saw that the iron gate was open, and flew through it in her bare feet, down the slope to the outside gate.

Where Noah was just coming in. Covered with dried Walker blood.

They all stood and stared at him, none of them asking, none of them daring to ask. Noah just looked back at them, his face like stone. Tillie was only vaguely aware of Mason beside her and Tom running up behind. All she could see was that Noah was alone, and every part of his clothing was red. As if he’d rolled in the stuff. There were even little bits of guts clinging to his chest and thighs.

Mason finally gathered himself enough to step forward. Tillie felt the brush of his arm against hers as he passed, saw his wide shoulder partially block her view. “Tell us what happened.”

“There was a blockade down toward the bottom of the foothills,” Noah said. His voice was low, steady, but had an edge to it. “We didn’t realize how much it was holding back – a small horde of them. When they smelled us, they got excited and started to charge, and there were so many of them the blockade didn’t hold anymore. It was just those sawhorses you put at the end of streets. It was hardly anything, but enough when they weren’t agitated. We turned a corner and they were just there. It just happened so fast.”

If Tillie had been a bit more herself at that moment, she might have seen how shaken Noah was. As it was, all she could do was watch in frozen shock as Mason ushered Noah to one of the chairs, letting him sit, even in his bloody clothes.

Finally, as the others started to stir and brought Noah food and water, Tillie said it.

“You got away.”

Noah looked up at her, as if puzzled by what she said.

“You got away. Are you sure that Stuart didn’t? Maybe you just got separated.”

“We were…we were trying to kill as many of them as we could, keep them from getting around us,” Noah said, and Mason looked at her, a strange expression on his face that she didn’t have the wherewithal to discern. “We made it back maybe fifty feet but…but sometimes you get knocked down, Til. And Stuart was on top of me, trying to fight them off…he was right on top of me…”

“Are you saying this is his blood?” Mason asked, the horror so quiet in his voice.

Noah gave a bare perceptible nod. “Couldn’t use the gun, it was trapped between us.”

“What about Stuart’s gun?” Tillie demanded. “Why didn’t he use it? If there were _so many_?”

Mason looked surprised at her scornful tone. Noah just stiffened, getting defensive.

“What the fuck would _you_ know about it?” he growled at her.

“ _How the fuck did you get away and he didn’t_?” Tillie roared back, charging at him. She stopped just short of knocking him backwards in the chair. She felt hands on her arms, trying to pull her back but she slapped them away.

“Tillie,” Mason said, soft, gentle.

“He was your brother, Mason!” she shot back at him, whirling on him. “And you accept this pile of shit? You accept the word of this…this _liar_!”

Noah stood up, and he and Tillie were inches away from each other. She glared up at him, even though he was easily a foot taller. She could smell the blood from his clothes.

“You see what I’m covered with, you stupid bitch?” he snarled at her.

“Watch it,” Tom hissed, his shoulder going between them. Noah looked at him, flinching only slightly, as Tom’s expression was rather ferocious, but Tillie just kept her eyes lasered onto Noah’s face, watching for any single tick of the truth. Tom’s interference was enough, though, to get Noah to step back just a bit. He gestured to his clothes.

“I was covered with this shit. Guts everywhere. Only reason I didn’t start vomiting is because we’ve all had it happen before, but this was worse. And it was like…they stopped. Once Stuart was dead they pulled back.”

“Did he…” Fletcher said, his voice unexpected and shaking into the intensity of the conversation. “Did he turn?”

“Yeah, but…he was too mangled to get up.” Noah looked down, and Tillie saw a flash of something on his face…shame? “I took care of it,” he added, looking to Mason.

Mason was so white – his dark hairs stood out like specks on his arms and chest, and it seemed all the ones on his head were standing up.

“I laid there a while, I was just…I couldn’t move,” Noah went on, eyes still on Mason, almost pleading. “When I got up, they weren’t coming after me. I think it was the blood. I think it’s the smell of their own, versus the smell of us. Dead blood versus living blood. I managed to crawl into a shelter for a few hours and when I had my legs back under me I started for home.”

“Okay,” Mason said, nodding his head.

“No,” Tillie said.

“That’s what happened!” Noah barked at her.

“I don’t believe you,” she spat.

“Well fuck you!” he spat back. Tom was still between them, and Tillie felt him tense, as if ready for Noah to come at her and block him.

“Tillie,” Mason said, his voice weak, pleading. A hand went to his forehead. “Please.”

It was his tone that made her stop. It was his face that finally dragged her eyes from burning holes into Noah. His brother was dead. This news was overwhelming him as it was, and their fighting wasn’t helping.

“I think you did it on purpose,” Tillie said, her tone almost conversational, as she turned and walked away.


	9. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tom tries to help Tillie. and Tillie has to face some hard truths.

Tom found her, after an hour of searching, in a closet.

They’d let her go for a bit, but she could hear them shuffling through the house. She could hear their vibrations through the wood and the glass. The house was so large that sometimes it was distant, but when they got close, the thin carpet did nothing to muffle their steps.

Finally, Tom figured out that the closet she had holed up in was cracked open just a few inches, just to let air inside. The dark quiet had been too stuffy and she needed ventilation. There was light, though – whoever built this house had put a window at the top of the closet.

Who puts a window at the top of a closet?

She pondered these things after the first few waves of ferocious tears rattled over her. Then her sobbing turned quiet, not wanting to draw attention. Her body would seize, tears would drip, her lungs would shudder, but no sound came out.

Thought was absent. There was just feeling. Feelings she could not understand, could not articulate. All she knew was that Stuart was gone, and in the void, only loss remained. A gaping emptiness that she seemed to want to fill with her grief.

In the brief moments of sanity between the passing gales, she could not have told you why she was so upset. They’d lost people before – it seemed to be only a matter of time before someone else died. Why was she taking this one so hard? Had she cared so much for Stuart? He’d been so concerned for her, concerned about her situation with Tom. His compassion for her…his _love_ ….

Later, when she was calmer, she would understand, just a little bit, that this was part of it. This knowledge created a sense of regret in her that was…enormous. A regret that would take her too long to understand, and by then, the closure wouldn’t really be necessary.

As it was, in this moment, she could only lie there and ache.

When Tom came, she was too tired to fight him. He pushed the door open and sat on the floor, right in the mouth of the closet. He reached in, scooped her up, and pulled her to him, holding her tenderly, as gently as if she were a newborn babe. His body seemed to fold her over, enclosing her, and she let herself take comfort in his smell, his warmth, his nearness.

A pervading sense of guilt started to seep into her the longer he held her. Whatever flaws their arrangement had, there was a connection between them, strong enough for him to want to help her and for her to be able to take his help. He didn’t say anything, didn’t talk about what had happened, didn’t try to reassure her that she was wrong about Noah. He seemed to understand her even when she couldn’t understand herself. Only when she seemed to cease her trembling and regain some sense of herself and began to adjust did he even push her hair from her face and attempt to dry the tears.

“How do you feel?” he asked after several long minutes.

She could only shrug. “I have no idea.” Only then did one emotion begin to take on a resemblance she could recognize. “A little embarrassed, maybe.”

“Why?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you don’t have to be. I know Stuart was a good friend to you.”

“Elanora was too,” she said. “I didn’t cry this much over her.”

Tom feel silent at that, and she could feel him shift beneath her.

“So many people I haven’t cried over,” she said, pushing away a bit, and Tom let her sit on the floor beside him, out of the closet. She met his eyes. Another emotion she could identify – anger. “And here I am, practically hysterical.”

“Stuart was important,” Tom said, and he sounded a bit like he was convincing himself, too. He eyed her, wary. “I mean, Mason’s brother. He watched out for us. Losing him is…it’s significant.”

“Yeah.” Anger again – this time at Noah, rage that he had done this and was getting away with it.

Tom’s eyes narrowed on her, and then, with a heavy sigh, he took her hand. “You don’t have to evade with me, Tillie,” he said. “I know.”

She blinked, suddenly afraid. “Know what?”

“How he felt about you,” Tom said. “And how you…you might have felt about him. Truthfully, if I hadn’t come along, I’m pretty sure that eventually, something would have happened between you two. I don’t know if you were in love with him, but I’m pretty sure he was in love with you.”

She stared at him, stunned. “You…you think that?”

He nodded.

“Then…then why…”

“Did I pursue you anyway?” Tom asked. She gave a half shrug this time, confused. “Because I wanted to, you let me. If you hadn’t been interested, you wouldn’t have…” he made a gesture with his hand to finish the thought.

Anger returned. This time sullen and quiet. Anger at herself. Yes, it was true. Everything Tom said before was true. He was the fantasy, the escape, the remembrance of things long gone. Stuart was the reality, the cold hard truth, the future. She thought she was more mature than that.

Tom’s fingers slipped under her chin. “It’s okay, Otille,” he said. “I made my peace with it. I had to, or else I would have been a jealous monster.”

She pushed his hand away. “Well, I haven’t.” She got to her feet.

“Where are you going?” he asked, alarmed as he scrambled up after her. But suddenly Fletcher was in the doorway, and Tillie came to a halt.

 

“Tom found you? Good. We’re all worried, Tillie, that business before—”

Compulsion seized her. She reached up and grasped Fletcher around the neck, hugging him, hard. She felt the roughness of his long white whiskers against her cheek, felt him jump against her, but then soften, and put his arms around her back.

“You okay, Til?” he whispered to her. She couldn’t see him but she guessed he was looking at Tom. That the two of them were exchanging worried looks over her head.

“I’m sorry, Fletch,” she said, voice gravelly and tired from so many tears. “I’m sorry about Elanora.”

If what he had experienced was anything like this…the loss, the emptiness…she had no idea. None.

“Yeah, well.” He patted her. “Thank you.”

She pulled back, looked up at him. “Seriously, Fletcher, it hasn’t even been a month. How…how have you coped?”

Fletcher gave an awkward little shrug. “I remember she wouldn’t want me to give up. I keep going for her. I know eventually I’ll see her again…” He reached into his shirt, showed her a silver charm – it looked like a crown of thorns, hanging on a black string. “It’s not up to me to decide when or where,” he said, as if he didn’t realize he was talking out loud, or even to her. “I’m alive, it’s my job to stay alive for as long as I’m meant to.”

Tillie reached out and touched the charm. It was prickly, almost as big as a ring. It was borderline sharp.

“Stuart wouldn’t want you or any of us to give up,” Fletcher said. “He wanted to keep you safe.”

“Keep us safe,” Tillie half-heartedly corrected him. She looked up at him, the guilt returning. “I should have…” she looked down. “Dammit.” She withdrew her hands, feeling a fresh bought of tears threatening. Fletcher looked at Tom, mildly panicked.

“Look, uh…” Fletcher ran a hand through his longish hair – getting longer, now that Elanora wasn’t around to cut it anymore. “I was going to say something for a bit, but I guess now is as good of a time as any. I’ve been hearing the two of you reading, in the library. I’ve been wanting to suggest for a while now that maybe you should do that in the evenings, with the rest of us. I mean, in this big house, things are a little different now, and I think, especially now, with everything that’s been happening…we could all use a little escape.”

Tillie looked to Tom. The night he had attempted such a thing was the first night they’d been together, particularly because Noah had been such a shit.

And a thought started to form in her head. A thought she didn’t dare speak aloud.

“Are you…are you sure?” Tom asked, although he seemed like he liked the idea, although it scared him a tiny bit.

“Yes, Tom,” Tillie said, fully facing him. “You should. You never should have stopped.” Her fists clenched. “And if Noah says one shitty word I promise I will deck him. Or kill him in his sleep. Whichever.”

Tom wanted to laugh at her “joke,” she saw it in his face, but then fear drifted down, that she was actually serious.

“Tillie,” Fletcher said, mildly chastising.

“No,” she snapped, spinning on him. “I don’t care what anyone says. I know he had something to do with it. I know he’s responsible somehow. I don’t know how—”

“But you can’t ever prove it!” Fletcher argued, distressed. “There isn’t any way!”

“Maybe if we go look where it happened,” she mused.

“No,” Tom said, forcefully.

She turned her eyes up to him, daring him to say more. But wisely, he didn’t.

“Well,” Fletcher said, to break the tension. “Tom, you’re up on duty. But if you need time, I can take it.”

“It’s fine,” Tillie answered for him. “He can go.”

“Are you sure—” Tom started.

“Yeah.” She walked away from him, from them both, and went to her room. She shut both doors, the one that led to the hallway and the one that was between her room and Tom’s. She lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, and let the thought start to coalesce.

Tom knew there was something between her and Stuart.

Tom had been made to feel really, really shitty the one time he tried to contribute an old skill to the group.

She had let him, valuing the shimmering dream he represented of things long dead over the strong, sure, solidity of true affection.

He knew why she was with him. Yet she continued to question why he was with her.

Was it so simple? Was it just because it was the only real purpose he felt he had? Was her existence so central to this group that he’d attached himself to her because it was the only way he could feel that he mattered?

It was ridiculous.

She got off the bed, paced the room. These thoughts were going to drive her mad. She had to stop. She had to get a grip. Stuart was dead, Tom was with her, she had to accept the reality of things and quit trying to see around it, as if there were something sinister behind it, making her doubt, making her…

She was going crazy. She was driving herself crazy.

She left the room, went to find Mason. Mason, who sat in the dining room with a hot cup of very black coffee – as there was no sugar and no cream to be had – staring into space, looking pale and wane.

His brother was dead. His twin brother. His other half. Tillie was stopped cold in the doorway, overwhelmed with shame at her own selfishness. Nattering on about Noah was not going to help him – but if Noah was dangerous, it was urgent that Mason be made to realize that and _do something_.

She slowed herself down as she walked in. Mason barely looked at her until she was sitting at his right hand. Perched on the edge of her chair, she just stared at him.

And he stared back. Slowly sipping that bitter coffee.

After a full minute, he said, “How you doing, Tillie?”

She gave a little nod. “Are you…are you going to go out there?”

She didn’t have to explain. Mason knew. “I’m not sure. Not sure there’ll be anything to find.”

Tillie frowned, squirmed. She wanted to tell him – or rather, remind him, as she had already made her suspicions quite clear – that the only way to know if there was any truth was to go and see.

Mason looked at her, knowing. “It can’t prove anything, Tillie,” Mason said. “What, we find some bones, we find his clothes?” His voice had gotten deep, rough. “Doesn’t prove anything. We ain’t some forensic detectives.”

“It might tell us something,” she insisted. “We can’t know unless we go. And the longer we wait the less chance there is.”

“I know.” He sighed. “Well, I’m sorry, darlin’, but you ain’t going. And I don’t want to hear a single argument from you. If it was bad enough to kill…Stu…and bring Noah crawling back covered with Walker guts, I ain’t risking you.”

She felt a flare of defiance. “Why not? It’s not like I’m any good at anything. So what, I wash the clothes? So what that I’m a woman, I can’t have kids, I have no intrinsic value.”

His dark eyes shot fire at her. “Stuart wouldn’t want me to.”

She had to stop at that. There was no arguing around that. Mason would not yield, she saw it.

With a huff, she stood up. “Fine. But will you do me one small favor?”

He looked at her.

“Don’t let him go anywhere alone with anyone. Especially not Tom.”

He didn’t as her who she meant, or call her back as she turned and left. But she didn’t go back to her room. She didn’t even stop at any of the other rooms she passed. She went straight on, into that large foyer, with the golden marble statue that looked more and more like a woman holding a child.

She looked up at it as she stood facing the front door, glancing back at it over her shoulder. Still and silent, its shadow fell behind it as the evening sun started to turn deep gold. It looked like a clock, the shadow the long minute hand, the marble the short hour hand, ready to strike midnight.

She opened the door, and kept on walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's all I got for now. No other chapters written. I shall try to maintain the weekly updates but things have been stressful. It may take a few.


	10. A Family Kind of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which TIllie runs away, and finds a few interesting things.

The night Elanora died, there had only been one Walker. That explained why it was able to get so far. Multiple Walkers would have been spotted or heard. But for some reason, this one had slipped through. She’d only seen it afterwards, and it was small, like a child. Maybe it had been a child. She didn’t like to think about that part.

Who had been on duty that night? Tillie couldn’t remember as her feet slapped against the concrete drive and then kicked up dust on the dirty road. Had it been Noah? It could have been. It wasn’t Fletcher or Tom. It wasn’t Leon, he rarely pulled duty. It certainly wasn’t her.

She couldn’t remember.

Elanora had been coming back from the reservoir. She was a bit of a wood nymph, she liked to slip down there at odd hours. Sometimes she came back with things, like mushrooms or a plant or two that was edible. Wild onions, a handful of sage. Leon didn’t question her findings, and it was possibly part of the reason the two of them got along so well. Elanora was maybe the only real friend Leon had in the group. He’d become more withdrawn, more concentrated on his work of feeding the crew after her death.

Being the only other woman in the group had led to a natural bond between her and Elanora. Tillie didn’t claim to know her terribly well – no more than anyone else in the group, honestly, except maybe Phillip, whom she had known from the very beginning, the only one left from her original group that were all long since gone. But Elanora had been kind to her, like a favorite aunt, winding flowers in her hair occasionally. She’d been the only one who smiled at her when Elanora realized Tillie had taken Tom as a lover – the rest had just accepted the situation with awkward little nods, or pretended not to know.

Was she being ridiculous? Was Noah that dangerous?

So what that he stared at her? He was a man, she was the only available vagina in his sphere of existence. Lust was a natural vice of man. As much as the feminists in her day would have berated her for thinking she just needed to get used to it, it wasn’t like there was any way to prevent it. And Noah had never approached her, never threatened her. And if he had tried anything, she as pretty sure that between the other men, he would have been strung up by his balls.

But her gut was certain. Something was wrong here. And the fact that it was Stuart…

She walked faster. She wanted to get away.

Her wandering felt aimless. She would turn here at an impulse, take that street to God-knew-where. It was all downhill. Winding roads and isolated homes behind overgrown bush and gates entwined with vines and weeds. Turned over garbage that had long since been scavenged by wild animals, plastic dragged out across concrete, fluttering in the wind. A can would roll every now and again, startling her with the sound.

Somehow, though, her feet started to go up. She could feel the incline in her calves. Up and over and into neighborhoods that looked a bit less residential but no less isolated. A long drive led into a fenced area, and she felt compelled to go take a look.

A building that was somewhat like a house, but much bigger and not as ornate, sat in the center of a heavily gated area. There was a parking lot around it, narrow and empty, with an old abandoned dumpster overturned at the end. The only indication that it was a parking lot was the cement blocks that indicated the spaces. The white lines were chipped and faded, hardly recognizable. And there were no cars. Even the oil stains that were common in parking lots had been faded with disuse.

The building itself was indiscriminate. Tan, beige, whatever color word you wanted to use. It was squat and rectangular, and there had been a walk that led up from the parking lot, but the gate had been shut and locked. The gate was in excellent shape, made of heavy black iron. High, with spikes on top, but not menacing. There was an elegance and simplicity to it.

Inside the gate was a yard. She couldn’t see much of it because the gate was filled with vines and brush that obstructed view. She could tell there was a yard inside filled with green, and what she could see looked well kept.

As if someone were living there.

A door opened, and a figure appeared. It was dressed all in black, with cloth over its head, like a veil. Was it a black robe? It walked into the yard, surrounded by green, and Tillie was able to shift enough to see that it was not an “it,” it was a woman.

A woman in a black habit, her face surrounded by white cloth.

A nun. She was looking at a nun.

A nun apparently picking vegetables.

Tillie stood and blinked for a moment, stunned. There had to be an explanation for this, but…

The woman looked up. Their eyes met. Tillie felt as if she’d been caught spying, and a shot of fear jolted up her spine. She felt herself moving rather than moving herself. She spun on her heel, turned and ran out of the parking lot, down the long drive, past the surrounding houses.

She was not a runner. This sprint lasted much longer than she would ever had done willingly. When it stopped, she was badly winded. She bent over double, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. It took much longer than she wanted it to.

When she was finally able to right herself, she was aware of two things. First, she had no idea exactly what she’d seen and felt completely stupid for having reacted the way she did. And second, she was completely exhausted.

She glanced to her right, saw a bench on a side street. It looked like this part was a bigger road, where maybe a bus had once passed. There was a small shelter over the bench, which was not very long or wide, but it was enough for her to sit on and stretch out her legs, which throbbed with the exertion.

How far had she run? Where had she run? She glanced back in the direction where she was certain she had come but couldn’t tell how far back up the road the parking lot with the gated building and the nun in the yard was.

She realized that at that moment, she didn’t really care. She hadn’t slept worth a damn the night before, and the exertion and the excitement had knocked her flat. Even though she knew it wasn’t just dangerous but plain idiotic to lie down out in the open, she couldn’t help herself. She curled up on the bench, her arm underneath her head like a pillow, and told herself she was only going to rest a few minutes. She would keep her ears open.

When she awoke, her arm was cramped, and the sun was much lower in the sky. Her internal clock, which had been finely honed since the Before, told her she’d been asleep for nearly three hours.

And she was alive.

Was it luck that no Walker had come by to rip out her throat? It was impossible to think there weren’t any around. There were _always_ some around. Yet here she was. Alive. Her throat intact.

She got up, stretched, shook out her arm. She started walking again, going down, ever down. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she knew she wanted to keep walking away.

Away.

Away from Tom. Away from Mason. Away from Noah. Away from responsibility and people and community and love and caring and pain and loss and trust and anything that reminded her that she was human and flawed and so screwed up.

More hours passed. The sun got lower. It shone between trees and peeked at her through branches and was heavier and golden, indicating that it was going to start to set. When had she left? It was early in the morning when Noah returned, and only a few hours since Tom found her after that…it had been late morning when she had left their newfound home.

A thought occurred to her. They would be frantic at this time. They would have noticed her gone when she never came to eat lunch, but maybe would have thought she just needed more time to grasp the new reality. She’d disappeared once, maybe they didn’t feel like going to look for her again. But if they had – and she knew they had, she just somehow knew – they would have noticed her absence, and searched the compound for her, and upon not finding her, would have wondered where in the hell she could have gone.

Mason would put it together fastest, or maybe Tom. They would think that she had disobeyed a direct order and had gone to find Stuart’s body. With no idea exactly where it was.

And at that point, Mason would have put together a search party and they would have gone to look for her.

Which was stupid, she thought, as she continued to walk, her ankles starting to complain, her knees starting to ache. Why look for her? It was too big a task, no way to know where she had run off to. Maybe they would make Noah take them to the body on the outside chance that just maybe, _maybe_ she would have figured it out. It was slim. It was unreasonable. They would have put on extra watch in case she came back. Nobody was going to endanger themselves for a crazy girl. Even if she was the _only_ girl.

She couldn’t make herself believe it. If Stuart was alive, he would have insisted on finding her, but Stuart wasn’t alive. Tom would protest, he would complain, he would argue with Mason. Mason wouldn’t need much persuasion. He would agree to go. He would probably go himself. Fletcher would volunteer.

Whatever her personal relationship with these men, they cared about her. Deeply. Loved her, maybe. If not romantically then in some way that was important, a family kind of love. She was part of them. They were part of her.

And she stopped walking. She turned, looked back where she had come. Just houses, houses she didn’t recognize, streets, green overgrown grass, trees with leaves missing because it was getting cooler. It was going to be dark soon, in less than an hour. She had to find some kind of shelter, she couldn’t expect to survive the night the way she had survived her afternoon.

“TILLIE!”

Her name split the air. A few birds resting in a tree fluttered up in surprise. There was a pounding sound, feet running at her. She looked to her left and saw Tom making a beeline for her, a gun hanging off his shoulder as he sprinted to where she was. She gaped at him, stunned and worried and feeling guilty but defiant. Behind him, she could see Mason briskly walking toward her, and Robert, his gun also on his shoulder as he continuously scanned the area for Walkers.

Tom pulled himself to a stop a few feet from her, his eyes large, frantic. His expression grim, worried, and a bit angry. Then he launched himself at her, pulled her into his arms, hugging her tight.

“Thank God,” he rasped. She had her arms up, and grasped his shirt which hung loosely on his back, with an open overshirt he’d thrown over the thinner T-shirt he usually wore. The blue one she’d given him from their findings. Her fingers grasped it, as if to hold him in place, but she didn’t hug him back, not really. Then his hands were on her shoulders and he moved her into his view, so he could glare down at her, like a parent finding a missing child. “What the hell, Tillie! Do you have any idea what we’ve been through?” He gave her the mildest of shakes. “How could you do that? We’ve been scared out of our minds!”

“Easy, Tom,” came Mason’s voice. Robert continued to watch their perimeter but he gave Tillie a disapproving look, nonetheless. Mason stopped a few feet from where Tom had Tillie in his grip, his hands on his hips, looking at her very sternly. “Care to explain yourself?” he asked, his temper very barely restrained.

She could only shrug in a painful, guilty way. She felt no words come to her, just looked down, but couldn’t see much past Tom’s arms, his hands still on her shoulders, as if afraid if he let go she’d run off again.

“Speak up!” Mason snapped at her. Tom flinched, giving Mason a side-eye but still too angry at Tillie to really defend her.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, sounding like a child that had been caught misbehaving.

“Oh, that’s great. You don’t know? You put all of us through this and you don’t fucking know.” Mason almost seemed to find it funny, but there was a frantic anger behind that amusement. He was in “laugh or you’ll scream” mode.

“Mason,” Tom said, “I did tell you she was in strange shape when I found her. It could be grief.”

“She was perfectly in her own fucking head when she came to talk to me, this ain’t grief.”

She felt a prick of annoyance that they were talking about her as if she weren’t present. “How did you find me?” she asked, her voice low and cowed.

“Robert tracked you,” Tom answered.

“Plus we figured where you were going,” Mason supplied. “You’re just damn lucky we didn’t bring Noah down with us.”

She glared at Mason, and shook off Tom’s hands. “Why didn’t you? You could see for yourself!”

“See what, Till?” Mason snarled. He flung out his arm. “So far, ain’t nothing to see! I don’t even know why we came after you, should have left you to--- but wait, I’m willing to bet a week of guard duty that you haven’t seen a single Walker all this time. Right?” At her silence, he snapped, much harsher, “ _Right?_ ”

“Fuck if I know why!” she cried, her tone somewhere between upset and defensive.

Mason shook his head, near hysterical laughter at this point. “You just have no idea, do you?” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “You think Stuart would want to see you like this, see you being so careless and reckless? Flaunting your gifts like—”

“Mason,” Tom said, his voice nearly pleading.

“Look, if you don’t care, then you don’t care,” Tillie snapped, backing away from them, getting ready to turn. “But I’m going to find out. We’re out here, and I’m not going back—”

“We will truss you up like a hog and carry you back hanging from a pike if we have to,” Mason growled.

“—until I see,” she finished, and turned away, launching herself down a side street.

They were on her quickly, and there was no way she could out run then, most especially Tom, but somehow, through some miracle, she kept a few steps ahead.

What stopped them was the smell.

It hit like a wall. The smell of rot. Not just decay, but human decomposition. It was thick and raw and intense, slapping them in their throats, coating their tongues, filling their nostrils until nearly all of them were gagging. They’d smelled it before, but not on this scale.

There was a thick circle of them, having been felled by what could only have been gunfire. Some had been stabbed in the cranium, but most had been shot. And in the center of the circle was what was left of a body, having been gnawed on to the point of near unrecognizability.

But Tillie recognized it. She recognized it by the scraps of the shirt that was left. It was ripped into pieces, but there was a piece large enough. She was surprised at how confident she felt that it was the shirt Stuart had been wearing the morning he left with Noah for the last time.

Mason walked up beside her, looking down at the corpse. It was the bloodied remains of the dark hair that did it for him – hair identical to his own. Plus there was something hanging around the body’s neck, dangling onto the concrete underneath it. It looked like Stuart had been rolled onto his side, the way the bones were lying. There were bones, with little flesh on them, but still some flesh remaining. Tillie didn’t recognize whatever piece of jewelry Stuart had worn, but Mason did.

After all, they were twins.

Mason crouched down for a long time, staring at the body. Staring at Stuart. Noah’s story didn’t seem to be disproven by what they found – there was a piercing in his skull, to keep him from turning. He was surrounded by dead Walkers, as Noah said they’d gotten cornered.

It looked like they’d been told. As if Noah had told the truth.

“Fucking happy now, Tillie?” Mason choked.

No. She wasn’t happy. Quite frankly, she wasn’t ever fucking happy. Not anymore.

“I knew it. That’s Loki!”

The unfamiliar voice made all four of them spin around.


	11. Some Sick Stuff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which three new characters are introduced, and the group finds out what really happened to Stuart.

There were three of them. The most prominent of the three was a young woman with a high blonde pony-tail, had to be in her twenties at the latest, standing point with a semi-automatic shotgun pointed at them in a self-defensive posture. Behind her a bit on the left was a young man, had to be a teenager, holding a handgun. He was the one who had spoken. Between them was a woman in her fifties, a bit heavy set, long dark hair, her eyes wide and gaping at the newcomers.

Although technically, Tillie thought, _they_ were the newcomers.

The teenager pointed at Tom with his free hand. “See? I told you. I wasn’t making stuff up, Mom. Loki.”

“Tom,” Tom supplied, driven by habit even after all of this. Tillie shot him a look, wondering if this was really the time.

A click behind the armed trio revealed that Robert was much faster than any of them. He had his gun pointed at their heads. “I would lower those,” he said in a calm voice. “We’re not here to hurt anybody.”

“Fred, put that down,” the woman he had called “Mom” said. “Jules, come on. If Tom Hiddleston is with them they can’t be that bad.”

_Oh great,_ Tillie thought. _Fans_.

“I don’t give a fuck who he is, Heidi, even if he’s Harrison Ford,” Jules said, her tone low and dangerous. “If that guy doesn’t take his gun off me, this Hiddles-whoever is getting one to the forehead before I go down.”

“Julianna!” Heidi said, shocked.

Fred lowered his weapon first, his attention suddenly taken by the bodies behind them. “Oh, you’re here about that guy?” he asked, his tone strangely disconnected from the tone of two people holding weapons and threatening to kill each other. “Yeah, that was some sick stuff.”

“What?” Mason asked. “You saw it?”

“Not with my eyes,” Fred said. “On camera. We watched it.”

“Camera?” Tillie said. “You have a camera?”

Fred nodded, looking very proud. “Hooked them up myself. Been powering them with solar panels. I’ve got a whole row going up and down the street, it’s how we watch for the…for the Things.” He flicked his fingers aimlessly at the fallen Walkers. “Saw what those two guys did. Well, what one guy did to…to that one.”

“You saw it,” Mason said, stepping closer. Jules tensed. Mason seemed to just remember she was there. Mason raised his hands. “Look, Robert behind you, he’s right, we’re not here to hurt anybody, we promise. Yeah, we came looking for our…for our friend, but if you saw what happened, if you have it on camera—”

“We can’t keep everything,” Jules said, annoyed. “We’ve probably recorded over it by now.”

“No, I’ve got it,” Fred said, completely confident. “It was too wicked to erase.” He grinned, obviously proud.

Tillie frowned. Something was seriously off with this kid. But for his inappropriate reactions, he didn’t seem dangerous. There was an air of innocence about him, really. Misplaced enthusiasm, yes, but there was no way for him to know the victim of what he called “too wicked to erase.”

“Can we see it?” she asked, looking at Fred.

“Yeah!” Fred gleefully replied. “Come on!” He turned and started down another sidestreet.

“Julianna,” Heidi said.

“When he does, I will,” Julianna said, arching an eyebrow in Robert’s direction without looking at him.

“On three, then,” Robert said.

They counted.

They lowered their weapons.

“Is it all right with you if we follow your son?” Mason asked Heidi, who seemed to be in charge, even though she carried no weapon.

“Yes.” Heidi looked at Tom, licking her lips nervously. “It’s because we recognized you that we came out here. Fred insisted. He was…the Marvel movies were a big help to him. He’s autistic. High functioning but…well, they helped him connect to people easier.”

“You talk too much, Heidi,” Julianna grumbled, glaring at them.

Tom attempted a charming smile at both women. “I’ve been accused of that, too.”

Tillie almost rolled her eyes. “Can we follow Fred? I want to see.” She looked at Mason. “We need to see.”

Mason nodded and they proceeded to follow Fred into the house he had entered.

It was smallish, tidy, neatly organized. It looked like it was well barricaded against a potential horde. That was the real danger – not the individual Walkers or even the groups, but the times when they moved together like a herd and just razed over everything in their path. In those numbers, walls made little difference, unless they were supported.

The windows were boarded up securely. The doors had heavy latches on them – one of them apparently had experience with hardware and knew what to do to enforce them. Tillie was the first of them to follow Fred, and walked into a room that was filled with computer monitors. Each one showed a different picture. A different angle from the house, a different street.

“This is how we watch for the Things,” Fred said. He shuffled around in a box beneath the table where most of the monitors were set. Tillie had almost expected for there to be VHS tapes in the box but Fred pulled out shiny discs, each carefully labeled in neat print. He held one up, gave her that same proud look. “I record everything. These are re-writeable so we can record over them but sometimes I keep things.”

The others came in – most prominently, she felt Mason beside her. Heidi walked over to stand beside Fred, and Tillie got the feeling it was as much to mind Fred as it was to protect him. She glanced around the room and realized the walls were filled with racks and racks of glittering CD and DVD cases.

“Wow,” Tom breathed from the doorway.

“Awesome, isn’t it?” Fred said with pride. He had the DVD in the player and Tillie felt her entire chest tense up. “Okay,” Fred said, nearly gleeful. “Watch this.”

“Fred,” Heidi growled, but Tillie heard her own voice saying, “Shhh!” and the DVD started to play.

It was a high angle shot, looking down at where Noah was standing, and he was obviously shooting at something, but the Walkers were getting closer. Tillie squinted, trying to find Stuart --- and then she did. Stuart backed into the picture, too close to Noah as he was firing, but it seemed for a moment that the two were shoulder to shoulder.

Then, suddenly, there were too many Walkers. It could go like that, you think there’s only a few but while you’re fighting the ones in front of you, you don’t see the others gathering. Attracted by the noise and the smell, they could get three deep before you realized what was happening…

Noah and Stuart only had so much ammo, and the noise had apparently drawn more. The bodies started to pile around them and it tripped Stuart. He slid against Noah, and Noah caught him—

But he did not pick him up.

The Walkers were on Stuart. Stuart had his knife out and was able to kill the first two, but just as it seemed that the dead bodies were going to make some kind of barrier, Noah decided to pull Stuart even farther backwards. As if Stuart were a blanket Noah were pulling over his head.

The Walkers piled on. They were on Stuart – if the video had had sound, there would have been screaming, but thankfully there was no sound. They were on Stuart, Noah buried underneath – how long it took, they couldn’t tell.

“I thought both guys were dead, even though that first guy tried to use the other as a shield. Wait, I’ll fast forward—”

The video skipped at least a half hour. The Walkers got tired of chewing on what was left of Stuart and moved on. The bodies just lay there, in a pile, Stuart on top, barely recognizable. Then it shifted, and Noah emerged from beneath, rolling Stuart off him, again like a blanket.

Discarding him like he was nothing.

Noah stumbled out of the pile of bodies and Fred paused the DVD.

“See? I mean, no mercy in that guy. It was them against the Things and he decided to use the other one as a shield. Wouldn’t want him on my back,” Fred finished, muttering.

“Fred, stop talking,” Heidi said, her voice strained.

Tillie finally turned her eyes to Mason. She saw the fury there, and the grief. He stared at the frozen image of Noah at the edge of the screen.

Mason turned those blazing eyes to her. Then he turned and left.

Not just the room. The house.

She looked to Tom, to Robert, and they stared at her, blankly, unsure of what to do.

“Go after him,” Tillie said, looking at Robert. “Make sure he’s safe.”

Even though she was not in charge, Robert obeyed.

“I’m so sorry,” Heidi was saying. “About your friend. Fred doesn’t understand other people very well sometimes—”

“No, it’s fine,” Tom assured her. With Mason and Robert both gone and Tillie apparently speechless, the diplomat in him emerged. “Thank you, so much, for showing us that. It answers questions we could never have…”

“Yeah, okay, you got what you wanted. Thank you and have a nice day,” Julianna said from where she stood guard in the hallway.

“Come on, Tom,” Tillie said, grasping his arm.

“Well, wait, I mean, you’re here, you’re surviving. We have a larger group, way up in the hills. I’m sure that Mason, when he recovers, will want to—”

“Yes!” Heidi said, lighting up. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again, soon. But you need to go after your friend. We’ll be here.”

“Heidi!” Julianna growled.

Tillie let go of Tom’s arm and went after Mason. He could stay and flirt for all she cared. She had to keep Mason from killing Noah.


	12. The Beginning of the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Noah’s fate is decided, and Tillie comes to a decision.

It surprised her, how much Tillie didn’t want Mason to kill Noah.

Exactly why she didn’t, however, eluded her. But right now she had a mission.

She wasn’t a runner. Tom was the runner, not her. She could hear him behind her, not moving quickly, easily keeping up but not wanting to trip her.

“What do you think Mason is hoing to do?” Tom asked.

“You blind?” Tillie snapped. “He’s going to kill him.”

“Well…”

At Tom’s expression, she stopped dead. She couldn’t breathe, running had winded her. She managed to catch her breath, glaring at Tom the whole time.

“I don’t want Mason to murder someone!” she snapped between gasps.

“It’s not murder, though, is it?” Tom asked, taken aback by her suddenly shouting at him. “I mean, we have to have some kind of justice, don’t we? We have to protect ourselves—”

“Mason doesn’t get to make that call all by himself,” she said, walking quickly, still too winded to start running again. Tom’s long legs easily kept stride with her. “It’s too personal for him. Besides,” she grumbled, “you wouldn’t have been for it Before, would you? What makes it different now as then?”

“What, are we going to turn him over to the police?” Tom retorted. “It’s not like there’s a higher authority, here, Tillie.”

“Maybe not, but Mason can’t just kill him. And I’m afraid he will.” She was frustrated at him for not understanding, but more frustrated at herself for not knowing her own point. She’d _wanted_ Noah to be found out. She’d _wanted_ Mason to realize that something nefarious had happened. Why the hell was she freaking out now? “Look, if you don’t care, you can go back and talk to those people. I think Heidi was a fangirl.”

She did not expect Tom to grasp her arm and pull her up to a dead stop. She jerked, making an unfeminine noise in her throat as she fumbled with her feet to keep from falling, but Tom’s grip was solid and kept her upright. She looked up into his angry face, saw the rage there, his eyes blazing, his nostrils flaring. He had even slightly bared his teeth.

“I am completely tired of your shit,” he growled at her.

“You and me both,” she said out loud. Her fingers scratched at his, trying to get him to let go. “But right now, I’ve got better things to do than fight with you.” She twisted her arm under him. “Let go, Tom, I have to go!”

He let her go, but her skin was white underneath his grip, and it took a second for the blood to return. His teeth were still clenched but she made herself ignore him and resume her run.

He did not follow at the same pace. He kept at least ten yards behind, and she was well aware that this did nothing to soothe his simmering anger. She felt it behind her like a wave pushing her forward.

It took forever to get back to the house. She wasn’t even a hundred percent sure she was going the right way, as she had wandered around so aimlessly. But Tom didn’t call after her to change her direction, and she would glance over her shoulder now and again to realize he was still there. She struggled up hills, through bushes, stumbled across driveways, and eventually, finally, managed to find the path in the hills that led back to the house. The gravel driveway crunched under her feet and then gave way to smooth blacktop that would not survive a few more rains and winters.

“Tillie,” she heard Tom calling behind her. Thinking he just wanted to yell at her some more – and she couldn’t blame him – so she quickened her pace. Tom started to run, and she knew with his stride he’d catch her in no time. She was only half-way up the blacktop when Tom caught up with her, but he didn’t grab her this time. “What are you going to do?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“I don’t know,” she muttered, out of breath, exhausted, only wanting to see Mason, to see what he was going to do.

They went around the front of the house toward the outside iron gate and saw figures standing there, the gate opening to let Mason and Robert through. She quickened her pace, and Tom got a head of her a bit, but she pushed harder. Mason got larger, but it felt like she was watching things unfold from above. She could hear shouting, saw Noah standing in the yard, shock in his expression, and then Mason had a hand gun and it was pointed right in Noah’s face.

“Stop!” Tillie cried, stumbling and lurching the last twenty yards to fling herself between Mason and Noah. The gun was aimed right at the top of her head, and her arms were out.

“The fuck are you doing, Tillie?” Mason roared.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Noah said, his voice high-pitched and frightened, but he made no effort to remove her from the path.

“Otille!” Tom cried, panic in his voice.

They were surrounded by the whole community. Mason’s ranting and accusations had drawn everyone’s attention and they all stood there – Leon with a spoon still in his hand, Fletcher looking utterly dumbfounded, Robert as calm as always, but Phillip looking like he wanted to vomit.

“YOU,” Mason thundered at her, shaking the gun at her, “were the one who wanted this, Tillie. You were the one who insisted Noah did it on purpose. Well, he did. You should be fighting me for the chance to put one in his head, not standing in my way!”

“Mason,” Tillie rasped, out of breath, “you can’t just…murder him.”

“It’s not murder,” Mason replied. “It’s justice.”

She shook her head. “Justice is impartial. You want revenge. I do too, Mason, but…but we can’t just kill him.”

“You don’t have to. I can do it.” He cocked the gun.

“Whoah, wait,” Tom said, edging closer. Tillie thought for sure Tom was going to stand between her and the gun. She waved her hand at him, shooing him off. It was one thing to stand between her and another angry human being, entirely another to risk getting shot. “No, wait, listen,” Tom said, his voice careful, controlled. “We all saw the video, Mason. It wasn’t premediated. What Noah did, he did in a panic.”

“He deliberately let my brother get eaten by a bunch of fucking Walkers to save his miserable skin. That’s not what we do here. We watch out for each other. He’s a danger to all of us. I must protect the rest of us. This is what he deserves.”

“Mason,” Tillie pleaded, suddenly desperate to make him understand, and what she wanted him to understand, even she couldn’t quite formulate in her head. It seemed words escaped her mouth with the speed of thought. “You’re angry. You’re right to be angry. But to kill him with you in this state is just murder. It’s not justice, it’s not protecting us. You don’t know what it will do to you. Can you take that onto yourself? You’re supposed to be our leader, our example. What example is that? What does that make the rest of us, who follow you?”

“The world isn’t what it was, Tillie,” Mason said, his voice only a fraction calmer.

“Maybe the world isn’t, but we are still human beings. We are still…us. And if you do this. It’s the end of us, Mason. All of us. It’s the beginning of the end, at least. Please.”

He glared at her. He wanted to fire, she could see his finger twitching. But he wouldn’t kill her. He knew if he fired, it wouldn’t hit Noah, it would hit her. And then chaos would erupt.

“You have to be better, Mason,” she pleaded.

“Better,” Mason muttered.

“We can exile him,” Fletcher said, seeming to have come to something of his senses during the exchange. “Give him a few days’ rations, something sharp. No guns. Drive him way out as far as we can go. Let him go.”

“And if he comes back?” Mason asked, his eyes not leaving Tillie.

Tom said, “If we see him again, if he comes back, he’s shot on sight.”

Tillie finally dragged her eyes from Mason to look at Tom. His face was unreadable.

“It is a fair alternative,” Robert said.

“I think so too,” Phillip said.

Mason stood for another full minute, and then, finally, lowered the gun. “This is on you, Tillie,” he said, and then walked away into the house.

Tillie turned around. Noah was gaping at her, pale and shaking. He looked like he wanted to say something.

“Where should we lock him up?” she said.

There was a wine cellar – rather small and cramped and devoid of wine. It had a big bolt on the door and served as a temporary prison. Phillip and Robert saw to locking Noah in there, and promptly returned to the main room of the house.

“Where’s Mason?” Phillip asked.

“He went to his room,” Tillie said. “He needed to calm down.”

“Well somebody needs to explain what just happened,” Phillip said. “I’ve never seen Mason like that. Ever.”

Tillie looked toward Tom, and both of them looked to Robert. Without Mason, it was difficult to know how to proceed. Did he want everyone to know what happened? Did he want them to know about Heidi, Julianna, and Fred?

“I think,” Tillie said, “we should wait a bit. Give Mason a few hours.”

“I’ll go check on him,” Robert offered.

Tillie nodded. She looked to Tom again, who was looking at her with a strange expression. She couldn’t read it. He motioned with his head for her to follow him, and she did, although it seemed Fletcher wanted to talk to her about where she’d gone, or rather, _why_ she’d gone. She managed to put him off and followed Tom into his current favorite place – the library.

He crossed the room and sat down on the long black and white striped couch. He seemed so tired – he stretched out his legs, slouching down into a comfortable position. His arms rested over his head, his fingers threading through his hair before they came to reach behind his head, gripping the back of the couch.

Tillie sat down across from him in one of the chairs – heavy mahogany wood, cushioned with soft blue stuffing that was velvet soft. She, however, did not make herself as comfortable as Tom did. She perched on the edge of the chair, knees pressed together, hands clasped tightly.

“Tom,” she said, knowing he wanted to speak to her, but thinking it might short-circuit whatever he wanted if she got it out first, “I don’t think we should be together anymore.”

He scowled at her, pulled in his legs and leaned forward. They were only a few feet apart now. “What?” he breathed.

“I can’t do this to you anymore,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but…something is. I have to figure it out. I don’t know how I’m going to do that, but I can’t drag you along. It’s not your problem.”

He stared at her for a long moment, frowning slightly, trying to process her words. He looked down at his hands, which he’d pressed together, fingers stretched out. His eyes darted around, his thoughts scattered, him trying to gather them.

“It never even occurred to you,” he said, his voice very soft, “that I could help you. That I would want to help you.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” He looked up at her, and she could see that she’d hurt him. Really, honestly hurt him. She felt guilt twist at her insides but steadied herself. “You were amazing before, Tillie. I mean, what you did…you were right. I didn’t realize it until we were all…whatever Noah did, he did it because he was scared. No, that doesn’t make it okay, it doesn’t make it forgivable. And what you said to Mason. To get him to back down. I didn’t know you could do that. You don’t know what you are. I can see it. I saw it when we first met but I didn’t realize how strong it was until now.”

“I’m not amazing,” she said dismissively. “I’m completely fucked up and I feel like I want to crawl out of my own skin half the time.” She sighed, heavy and deep. “Mason won’t forgive me for this,” she said, almost to herself.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tom said. “It was the right thing to do. You saw it when nobody else did.”

“Fletcher would have, if he’d been given the same information. Robert probably did.”

“I saw their faces. Robert didn’t. He was going to let Mason murder Noah and not bat an eye.”

“Tom, you’re making too much of this.” She stood up. He reached out, not harshly, but slowly and lazily, his fingers winding around her wrist, his skin warm and soft.

“You have some crazy idea in your head that I’m with you because you’re the only option, and now that there are two other options, I don’t need you anymore,” he said. “I’ve been trying to tell you that it isn’t true, but I know I have no case because of the way things are. I wish you would take my word but what reason do you have to do that?” He pulled her in, between his knees. “Otille, please, I promise you that isn’t true. I didn’t realize how deeply I cared for you until I saw—”

“Stop!” she pulled her hand away, but didn’t move back. “What are you trying to say, that you love me? We don’t love each other. Whatever this is, it isn’t enough! I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me with this…this distraction!”

“But it isn’t just a distraction!” Tom argued, distraught. He stood, and they were so close together. Almost chest to chest. “I’m not ready to call it love but you are the most important person to me here. And I’m begging you not to walk away from this when it could be so much more than just an arrangement.”

She shook her head. “No. This…this isn’t good for me. Or for you. You have to find your place without it depending on me. And I have to…I don’t know what the hell I have to do, but I can’t figure it out with how I continuously wax and wane over what is going on between us.” She backed away, hands up. Afraid he would touch her again. “Please, Tom. If you care for me the way you say you do, you’ll respect my decision.”

She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at how much pain he seemed to be in, how she could feel it radiating from him. She turned her eyes away, deliberately not looking at his face, and scurried out of the room.


	13. A Matter of Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which somebody goes back on their decision, and Tillie is left pretty much alone.

“I need to talk to you,” Phillip said to her.

It had only been about a half hour since she’d left Tom and went to hide in her favorite spot. By the front door, leaning back against it, looking up at the statue. It seemed to be the absolutely only place in the house where her head stopped spinning and her guts stopped churning and her heart…

Her heart.

“Yeah,” she sighed, standing. There was a staircase nearby and she and Phillip sat side by side, companionably. She’d always liked Phillip, aside from the fact that she’d known him longer than anyone else. He was funny and smart and took things with just the right amount of seriousness. Lately, she’d forgotten how funny he could be.

Nothing seemed funny lately. And he certainly wasn’t being funny now.

“I need you to tell me what happened,” Phillip said, his voice gentle and yet firm.

So she did. She told him about running away, wandering through the neighborhoods, Tom and Mason and Robert catching up to her, finding the trio of Heidi, Fred, and Julianna, and Fred having video cameras lining certain streets. She told him about what they’d seen on the video. She did not tell him about the nun.

Maybe she held it back on purpose, but it didn’t feel relevant to tell him.

“You didn’t see any Walkers out here?” he asked her.

“No.” She wanted to snap that everyone was so hung up on that, but truthfully, to give it that attention would give it more attention than she wanted. She didn’t like to think about it. Didn’t want to think about what it meant.

“I’ve never seen Mason like this. I mean, I know none of us have, the last person who’s known Mason longer than us is Fletcher and even he’s thrown.”

“His twin brother was killed. Pretty much murdered.”

“Tom said it looked more like Noah was scared and desperate. We don’t know what we’re capable of in the wrong circumstances.”

Yes, this was why she liked Phillip. So reasonable. Almost didactic. And certainly compassionate.

“Not that I object to him being exiled. You did a hell of a thing.”

“So I’ve heard,” Tillie muttered.

“Are you going to run away again?” Phillip asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t want to promise anything I can’t keep.”

“Why do you want to leave?” he asked, genuinely curious. “I mean, aside from the fact that you can. It’s reckless for you to keep pushing this theory we all have that for some reason God-only-knows, the Walkers stay away from you, but I can’t necessarily blame you since it’s been 100% in extreme circumstances.” He paused. “Is it Tom?”

“No,” she answered quickly. “But Tom and I are…we’re done.”

Phillip made a grunting noise in the back of his throat. “He was beside himself when we all realized you were missing. He and Mason almost came to blows over who got to search for you. Mason didn’t want to bring him because he was afraid emotion would make him reckless and recklessness gets you killed. But Tom insisted. Beyond insisted. I honestly didn’t know he could get that angry. He always seemed so cool on the surface.”

Tillie felt the prickling heat of tears in the backs of her eyes. “Tom has to find his own place. He can’t keep…” Keep what? Was Tom really using her to define himself in this new world? Was she so arrogant to believe that?

“All of us do, Tillie. But whatever else may be going on, Tom cares about you more than any other person here. Whatever the reason. Love isn’t about reason.”

“We’re not in love,” she muttered.

Phillip gave a careless shrug. “Okay. I’m just saying to be gentle with him. He may have played a few badasses in his day, but he strikes me as kind of delicate.”

She wanted to laugh. Of all the words she would use to describe Tom, “delicate” wasn’t one of them. But maybe Phillip wasn’t wrong. In the Before, his elegance and grace had always been such a drawing point with her. But there was something there. Something soft, if you pressed just the right way.

“Okay, point noted. But now we have to figure out what to do about these new people,” she said, changing the subject.

“Well, with the loss of both Stuart and Noah, our numbers are badly depleted. The good news is, there’s lots of room here. Do you think they’d be receptive to joining us?”

“The kid, Fred, has a lot invested in where he is,” Tillie said. “Might be difficult. But they’re lucky they’ve survived as long as they have, down there, not too far away from where that herd overran Mason and Noah. It’s a matter of time. Although I do remember thinking they were pretty well barricaded.”

“It’s a matter of time for all of us, Tillie,” Phillip said with a resigned sigh, standing up. “Okay. I’m going to check on Mason. I think he needs a few hours, but I don’t like eyes off him, not when he’s in this unpredictable state.”

Tillie watched him go, and then got up. She had no idea where Tom was, but when she returned to her room, she caught a glimpse inside his, and saw him sitting on the bed. His back was against the headboard, his long legs stretched out, and he was looking down at something in his hands. She couldn’t figure out what it was.

Without thinking, she stood in the doorway. He looked up at her, his eyes wounded and vulnerable. There was accusation in them, but not anger.

“I’m sorry,” she heard herself saying. She had no idea what she was apologizing for, she just knew she was. So very, very sorry.

Tom stood up, putting aside the item he held in his hand. It was their shared copy of _Anna Karenina_ , which he gently set on the bedside table. He walked over to her, approaching her warily, as if she might bolt, but she felt pinned. As if he had her against a wall.

He truly was beautiful. Long limbed, slender, muscular and still lanky. Even as his hair had grown a bit long and wild, the curls having turned golden in the continuous exposure to the sun. His beard he kept trim with a small pair of scissors, so it wasn’t too wild, and it didn’t grow that thick on his angled face. It gave him a dashing appearance, even in the midst of the lines of stress and sun that they all carried. She felt herself flush, and marveled at her own inconsistency.

She wanted to be free of him, and yet she desperately wanted him. It made her head ache with confusion.

When he reached her, he slipped one hand under her underarm, fingers splaying across her back as he pulled himself closer. He pulled until she was against his chest, looking up at him. He didn’t have to chase her, or grab her. His presence was like a net and she was stuck fast.

And then he was kissing her. So gently at first, tentative, and then more passionately the longer she let him.

She threw herself into it. They shut and locked the door, as it was mid-evening and nobody would wonder if they went to bed early. She was more adventurous, more bold than she’d ever been with him. Before, she’d acted as a vessel, waiting to be filled by him, waiting for his direction, his control. Letting him do as he pleased and just floating along. But she felt a dark spark of something light in her belly and she didn’t play nice this time.

It seemed to excite him even more.

It was past midnight when Tillie made any attempt to slip from his arms. He clung to her, not wanting her to go. His murmured pleas in her ear broke her heart, and upon realizing the lateness of the hour, and knowing nothing would happen with Mason until early morning at best, she resigned herself to spending the rest of the night in his arms.

Everyone was up early the next morning. The events of the previous day had put the whole house on edge, and there was a collective anxiousness as they gathered outside, waiting to see what was going to happen.

Mason had been up much earlier than the rest of them, conferring with both Phillip and Robert. It was agreed. The two of them would take Noah as far out as they could, and send him away. Two less people made their number a sad seven, and with Phillip and Robert both gone for the day, that would reduce the number in the house to five.

There was also the matter of the three strangers at the bottom of the hill.

Two women and an older teenager. It was fresh blood. And even better than that, it was something completely different. No, Fred was not a child, as Mason quickly pointed out, but he was younger than any of them. Plus two more women would (as Tillie secretly thought to herself) take the pressure off certain situations.

It was quickly agreed that they needed to find out more about those three, as soon as possible. So Mason decided to go with Tom and Fletcher back to their home and talk to them.

Which left Tillie in the house alone. With Leon. Not that she was particularly worried, but it put her on perpetual guard duty for the rest of the day. It was, she sensed, a punishment for what she’d done, but Tillie couldn’t bring herself to care. She watched Phillip and Robert drive off, and Mason, Tom, and Fletcher head down the hill. The guns were divided between them and she was left with only a handgun.

“You don’t have to worry, Tillie,” Mason said before they left. “You never see any Walkers anyway.”

It was a biting remark. It hurt her feelings for reasons she couldn’t explain. But she’d done this to herself. She had made her bed with Mason. He was not going to forgive her this time.

The morning passed. She wandered the perimeter, not seeing anything or anyone. Leon brought her a late breakfast – eggs wrapped in the tortillas he’d managed to perfect in the last week. Like a breakfast burrito, but it made her desperately miss potatoes and cheese. As she sat munching it, she saw the three on foot approaching.

And they didn’t look happy.

Mason looked outright pissed. Tom seemed to be leery of Mason, and Fletcher just looked sad. Tillie felt a stab of worry for him. All the stress of these last days could not have been good for him. He wasn’t a young man anyway, and this drama wasn’t good for him. She could see Tom’s age starting to show as he approached her, tense and agitated.

“Okay,” Tom said, “two things. One, I’m relieving you of duty—”

“But you just got back,” Tillie said.

He shrugged. “Wasn’t successful. The young woman with the rifle, Julianna? Remember her?” Tillie nodded. “She took one look at us and demanded to know where _you_ were. We tried to assure her that you were back at our home, but she seemed to think we had some…nefarious purpose. Or like she suspected we’d done something awful to you. She wouldn’t even talk to us. Fred was disappointed you didn’t come back and wouldn’t come out of his room. Heidi talked to us, and listened to Mason’s invitation, but she said if we were serious then you needed to come down and show yourself.” He looked very uncomfortable. “Mason was…well, he wasn’t happy about that.”

Understatement. Mason had apparently been so pissed he sent Tom to talk to her. With Stuart gone, it seemed Tom was fulfilling the role of diplomat. It was good for him, she realized. She’d wanted him to establish his own role, independent of her.

“Okay, so, what does he want me to do?” she asked.

“Well, I think he wants you to go down there with me. He didn’t seem worried about sending just the two of us. I think he thought bringing Fletcher would present us as relatively harmless, after all the guns and drama of yesterday, but it didn’t work.” He glanced away from her, his face showing his thoughts. “I wonder about Julianna. I have a feeling she’s been through some awful experiences.”

“She probably has. All right then, just tell me when he wants us to go.”

“First thing tomorrow,” Tom said. “I’m on duty, you go rest.” He bent over, kissed her cheek. “You need it,” he said, his voice and expression clearly implicating their earlier intimacy.

She wanted to tell him that last night had been a weakness, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The fact that she’d used him as a distraction sickened her. All this time, she’d been so worried about Tom using her that she had utterly failed to realize she was the one who had used him. And apparently still was.

She gave him a smile, though, not too bright, but sweet enough, and went and did as he said.


	14. More Scared of the Living than the Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the three newcomers come for a tour, and Tillie and Julianna bond.

“You can’t be the only woman in your group,” Julianna said, with the kind of angry dismissal one gets when one does not like the truth.

“Afraid so,” Tillie replied with a rueful smile.

“And…” Julianna paced the small living room. Tillie and Tom sat on the couch, with Heidi perched on a nearby recliner. It was her home, as she explained, and Julianna had joined them some months ago. The young blonde was very twitchy, and usually carried around her gun, and Heidi implicated there was a reason but so far it hadn’t been explained. “And you’re not…I mean, all those men, and they don’t…”

Tillie was pretty intuitive. The horror of what Julianna was implying was enough to make her stomach turn over. “I’m an equal,” she said. “Mason would never allow any of them to force me to perform any…services. That’s not the kind of group we are.”

She felt Tom’s hand enclose over hers. She saw him open his mouth to say something, a glint of pride in his eyes, and was sure he was going to mention that the two of them were together, but she pinched the web of his thumb and forefinger and he gave her a sharp look, confused.

Julianna regarded this with suspicion. “I just have a hard time believing it.”

Tillie felt Tom bristle. “Not all men are animals,” he said, his voice low.

She gave him a sharp laugh. “Okay.”

“I think we should at least visit the house,” Heidi said. “I mean, if we don’t like it, we can leave.”

“Sure we can,” Julianna grumbled.

“Yes, you can,” Tillie assured her, getting up and walking over to Julianna. “I promise you. We don’t keep people against their will. But you should at least see it, we’re pretty impressive.”

“I want to go,” Fred chirped.

“Really?” Heidi mused. “I would have thought I’d need to convince you.”

“They sound like they have a lot more power than I do,” Fred said. “I at least want to look.” He smiled at Tillie, in an innocent way.

“It’s not that far, maybe a half hour walk on foot,” Tom said, his voice much smoother this time. “You can be there and back before sunset. If you decide you don’t want to stay.”

“Well, we’d need to come back and pack up,” Heidi said. “Fred can’t leave his DVDs—”

“We have a car,” Tillie said. “We can drive down here and get all your things in probably one trip. It only took two trips for us to move from our camp by Lake Hollywood to the house.”

“Lake Hollywood?” Heidi echoed, impressed. “That’s where you were before?”

“I’ve always loved the Hollywood sign,” Fred sighed. “Mom would never let me go see it, though, after all this happened.”

  
“Because she didn’t want you to get eaten,” Julianna pitched in, but her tone was affectionate, if rough.

Fred just scoffed. Heidi rolled her eyes, and stood up from her chair. “Okay, that settles it. We make the trip. Can we just come as we are? Do we need to bring any supplies?”

“I’m bringing this,” Julianna said, her hand brushing her gun. Tillie nodded.

“That’s fine.”

Tom shot her a look, and she ignored it.

It was clear that Julianna did not want to go, she was only tagging along because she didn’t want to let Heidi and Fred go off without her. She trailed behind them, keeping up the rear, while Tom lead the way. Tillie chatted amiably with Fred and Heidi, but it was more like Fred chewed her ear of with talk about movies and how he got all the cameras to work and how he could do the same for them if they wanted.

Tom kept turning around during this conversation. Talk about movies got his attention, and he wanted to engage with Fred, Tillie saw it, but Fred was focused on her with a singularity that was a bit alarming. Heidi had told her he was autistic, but she’d never had any experience with people with autism so she didn’t really know what that meant. She didn’t get any sensation that Fred’s interest in her was inappropriate – it seemed innocent, like a child discovering a new favorite aunt, and wanting to impress them. The fact that Fred was a few inches taller than her made him no less child-like.

Instead, Tillie shot him a few sympathetic smiles as they made their way back to the house.

When they reached the gates, Fletcher and Mason awaited them. Tillie hoped, irrationally, that somehow this might help fix things. He’d given her something to do and she’d succeeded. But Mason didn’t look at her, not once. He focused on Tom.

“So it went well?” he asked.

Tom nodded proudly. “Tillie convinced them to come take a tour. They don’t know if they want to stay yet—”

“This place is sick!” Fred enthused as he gazed at the large house. His eyes traveled around the large stone outer gate and then again around the inner one made of black iron. “It’s like a fortress!”

“We like to think so,” Mason said, his eyes taking in the three newcomers. “Want me to show you around?”

Heidi was a bit awed, her mouth slightly hanging open. Tom touched her shoulder and she gave a little jerk. “Um, yeah,” she said. “That would be great!”

Upon Mason’s appearance, Julianna had shrunk even farther back. Tillie sidled alongside her, concerned. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just…” she shivered. “I don’t…”

Heidi and Fred were following Mason and Tom through the gate. Fred turned and called, “Come on, guys!”

“In a minute, Fred!” Tillie called back. “It’s okay,” she told Julianna. “You don’t have to go into the house if you don’t want to.”

Julianna was watching Heidi and Fred get farther away and her expression was getting more and more distressed. She darted ahead, as if wanting to catch up, but as they went into the inner yard, her steps faltered. She had her gun in her hands, but they were trembling.

Tillie reached over gently and put her hand on the barrel of the gun. She pointed it as down as it would go. “Julianna,” she said—

“Jules,” Julianna replied, “Everyone calls me Jules.”

“Jules,” Tillie started again, “if you’re nervous, that’s fine, but you have to make sure your weapon is secured. You don’t want to accidentally hurt someone, do you?”

“Oh. Yeah, of course.” She flicked a switch on the side of the weapon. “I put the safety on. But…”

Tillie had a brief flash of a child watching her mother walk away from her, the way Jules’s expression seemed so torn.

“I don’t want them to go without me,” Jules said in a tiny voice.

“They’ll be safe,” Tillie assured them. “Tom is with them.”

“He’s a man,” Jules grumbled. “You can’t trust men.”

Tillie looked at her hard. She wanted to know what had ever made Jules think that. Something really horrible had happened to her, but Tillie knew making her tell her wasn’t going to help anything.

“Tom is trustworthy,” Tillie assured her. “We’ve been together for some time now.”

“With him?” Jules said, jerking her eyes back to Tillie.

“Tillie, come on!” Fred called.

“Hang on,” Tillie murmured, and then turned and jogged up to Fred. “I’m going to stay with Jules,” she said, “but you can go with Tom. He’s been in a few movies, you know. You can talk to him about all that stuff.”

Hearing Tillie say his name, Tom drifted back toward them. “Come on, Fred. It sounds like you know more about film than I do.”

“Because I do,” Fred said as if it were obvious. He looked at Tillie and then back to Tom. “Well, if Tillie says you’re okay.”

“I do,” Tillie said with a wink.

She and Tom exchanged a look as Fred finally went with them. It was somewhere between amusement, gratitude, and warmth.

When she returned to Jules, Fletcher had started up a conversation with her. Jules had noticed his wedding ring, which she’d pointed out.

“She passed away a little while ago,” Fletcher was explaining when Tillie returned.

“How?” Jules asked, blunt.

“It was a Walker,” Fletcher said, his voice soft but steady.

“I’m so sorry,” Jules said.

“Her name was Elanora,” Fletcher said.

“She was a wonderful person,” Tillie said, giving Fletcher a compassionate squeeze. “She used to cut our hair for us.”

“Oh? Heidi can do that. She used to be a professional beautician. She worked in a high-class clinic before…before this.” Jules had meandered toward the outer edge of the yard. “It’s been so long since I could just sit in the grass,” she sighed as she sat down, stretching her legs out in front of her.

“Want something to eat?” Fletcher offered. Jules regarded him skeptically.

“Sure, Fletch, go ahead and bring us something,” Tillie said, and off he went. Tillie sat down on the grass with Jules, lets folded under her, letting the silence stretch.

“He seems nice,” Jules said, finally.

“He is. It’s been hard for him since Elanora died.”

“When you first were…” Jules trailed off. “I mean, who were you with?”

“One of them is still here,” Tillie answered. “Phillip. The others are all gone. We met up with Leon, who’s also here, he’s the cook, you’ll get to try it when Fletcher comes back. And Noah. The guy in the video who…who, uh…”

“The one who died or the one who—”

“Yeah, him. And then Mason and Stuart, and Fletcher and Elanora. Tom and Robert came along not too long after we settled into Lake Hollywood. There were others, but…well. Things happen.”

“Yeah. Truthfully, I’m more scared of the living than the dead.” Jules brought her legs in, mimicking Tillie’s position. Just then Fletcher returned with two bowls.

“We found some canned sausage gravy,” Fletcher said. “Leon managed to turn it into something edible. And biscuits!” He handed Tillie a bowl, and offered one to Jules, who took it with hesitation. Tillie gave Fletcher a little nod as Jules stared into her bowl, and Fletcher left them alone.

“It’s good,” Tillie said, taking a bite. At Jules’ continued hesitation, she reached over and took a scoop of the biscuit and gravy and ate it herself. It seemed to be the assurance that Jules needed and she tucked in.

Jules let out a small grunt between mouthfuls. “You must think I’m crazy. My paranoia.”

“No. I think you’ve been through some horrendous shit. You can’t know who to trust in this new world. I’ve been lucky.”

Jules seemed to fold into herself as she continued to eat. Tillie got the sense that she wanted to share, but just…couldn’t.

They chatted about other things. Mostly Tillie talked and Jules listened, asking the occasional question. Tillie explained how things generally worked, pointing out the various guard posts – Mason and Tom were busy giving Heidi and Fred the tour, so Robert was out doing guard duty on his own.

“I’m pretty good at guard duty,” Jules said.

“If you stayed here, you’d get plenty of shifts. Mason tries to keep things even but he doesn’t put me on night duty much. I have a feeling you would fight him on that.”

“Fred would be damn useless when it came to being outside with a gun,” Jules said. “But if he brought up all those cameras he could set it up so that nobody would have to be outside. Just monitor the screens. That’s pretty much how we do it. Fred is pretty much on 24-hour watch, at least part of his brain is. He can split his attention like nobody I’ve ever seen. He’s watched those movies so many times he can run them through his brain, but he still likes to watch. And when he sees something that might be a problem, I go outside and take care of it.”

“Sounds like a good system.”

“We’re fortunate to have Fred. He and Heidi always sort of lived isolated from everyone else, Fred just doesn’t like people too much. I’m surprised he liked you so much, but I guess I can’t blame him.” She gave her the first glimmer of a smile. “Taking full time care of him has pretty much eaten up any social life Heidi ever had, so she didn’t lose too much when this all happened. They just became more isolated. I was so grateful to find them, that they took me in.”

Tillie waited. It seemed that Jules wanted to share, she really did, but it hurt too much to talk about.

“This place is awesome!” Fred shouted as he came bursting out of the patio doors, disrupting the quiet. Tillie couldn’t help but smile, not just because of the youthful exuberance, but also because it made Jules smile as well.


	15. Possessive Ex-Boyfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Julianna’s background is revealed, and Tom gets jealous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't posted. I don't see this story going much father, maybe up to Ch. 20, maybe a bit further.

“I’ll tell you, if you want to know,” Heidi said.

Tillie and Heidi were sitting by the outdoor fire, in the canvas chairs that surrounded the fire pit. It was late, and the three had decided to spend the night and go down in the morning to bring their stuff up.

Fred had already fallen in love with the place. The fact that they had working television sets due to the intricate system of solar panels, as well as hot running water, had sold both mother and son right away. They’d let Fred pick his room, which he had no problem with. The large den where the house television resided was soon going to become his favorite place. Right now, he and Robert and Jules were discussing where Fred could put his cameras, and a smaller room had been selected for the monitors.

However, Tillie was convinced that part of Heidi’s enthusiasm came from Phillip.

The two had met during the tour. Heidi seemed to not be able to stop staring at the man, and Phillip seemed identically struck. They sat together during the meal, talking in low voices that couldn’t be overheard, but Tillie knew the body language. Turned out cupid was not a Walker, but in fact alive and well.

It was only because Phillip was doing his guard duty shift that Heidi was with her now, talking.

“I saw you and Jules, and she seems to trust you,” Heidi said. “I think it’s a woman thing. I mean, I don’t mean that Jules hates men, but after what happened to her…she didn’t tell you, did she?”

“If she wants to tell me, she can.”

“She probably won’t. She hates talking about it. When we first found her, she would have these awful nightmares and would scream in her sleep. She’d cry for hours. She scared Fred but I didn’t have the heart to kick her out. Even then it came out in near hysterics, in bits and pieces over the following weeks, months. She was found by a group of men who did…horrible things to her. Kept her like an animal, passed her around. She was just a thing to them.”

“That’s awful.”

“It wasn’t even what you’re picturing, you know. I mean, you probably have visions of whippings, beatings, being locked up in a cage. I’m talking psychological stuff. Collars can be studded with diamonds but it’s still a collar. If you’re trained to think you’re nothing but a receptacle for a man’s sperm, that’s what you start to believe, but that kind of thing…it’s worse than beatings, worse than any kind of gruesome torture you can imagine.”

“I can’t begin to imagine why anyone would want to do that.”

“I can,” Heidi hissed under her breath. “My ex-husband was…he never hit me but trust me, there was a lot of abuse. Seeing him get chomped was the happiest day of my life.” She shook herself. “The absolute worst part is not having any protection, no way to escape. Nobody who can help you. So yeah, Jules and I understand each other. I love her like a daughter. But if we ever run into those guys who had her, well…there’s a reason I always let her carry that automatic weapon. Belonged to my husband but it’s hers now.”

“Do you know how she got away?” Tillie asked.

“I know it involved a lot of waiting for exactly the right moment, and a hell of a lot of running. Poor thing was half dead from exposure when she stumbled into our neighborhood.”

“Where were the men who had her? I mean, are they somewhere here in Los Angeles?”

“Probably. Men in this town have been selling flesh since the beginning, it was just business as usual for them. If it wasn’t for you, she would never have come up here. One woman and a bunch of men?”

“Men are more than their base urges.”

“Some are. But the men who had her didn’t believe that. It wasn’t that they wanted her and the others for themselves, it was about trade. She was a commodity. And she thought you might have been, too.”

“No.” Tillie suddenly felt ridiculously grateful for Tom. “There were others, though? Other women where Julianna was…kept?”

“Yeah. At least five. Could have been more.”

Tillie found herself wondering what Mason would do if he found this out. If he knew that somewhere out there, somewhere close, there were people doing that sort of thing.

She shook herself. They had a few other things to worry about first.

“I’m surprised she agreed to stay the night here. She hasn’t come inside yet.”

“She won’t sleep. She’ll stay out here all night. It will take a bit to wear her down but she’ll see, pretty soon, that this is a good place and that she can trust these people. She can be pretty stubborn.”

“Well, if she wants to sleep out here, I can get her at least a sleeping bag or a tent. We still have things from when we were at the reservoir.”

“That might be good.”

“I’ll see where they’re being kept.” Tillie got up, looking around for Julianna. She realized that the woman had somehow meandered her way toward the patio entrance, where the kitchen nearly reached out onto the wide stone tile. She was standing at the edge, talking to Leon. Her gun hung limply at her hip but she didn’t seem to be neglecting it. She looked over her shoulder at Tillie when she approached. “Hey.”

“Hey. I was asking Leon where he got the biscuits from before. He said you guys found some flour. He also said you had chickens. I didn’t see any chickens.”

“We were working on building them a coop. They’re probably asleep, they’re pretty lazy.” She looked from the edge of the patio door to where Jules stood. “Does this mean maybe you’ll want to come inside?”

“Maybe in the morning, after breakfast.”

“Well, if you want to sleep outside, I have a sleeping blanket, and even a tent, if you want.”

“The blanket sounds good. I’ll pass on the tent. Maybe tomorrow, though. Not the first night I’ve spent under the stars,” she added with a wistful smile.

Tillie’s heart clenched. Julianna was a beautiful woman, despite the grime and the physical wear that living this kind of life caused. But she had been hurt so badly, abused, her reality distorted to the point where trust was a four-letter word.

“I’ll go find it,” Tillie said, and ventured into the house.

Phillip had kept all their old supplies locked up in a storage room close to the garage, so they could grab things quickly. She found her old sleeping bag quickly and turned to head back, only to be waylaid by Tom.

“So how is it going?” he asked, seeing her load. “What are you doing?”

“Jules is going to sleep outside.”

“She is?” His face squinched, his nose making that adorable little wrinkle she’d been so crazy for in her fangirl days. “Why? When we have so many rooms?”

“You have noticed she hasn’t set foot in this house,” Tillie said, her tone struggling to stay level.

“Yeah. Fair enough. I wonder why.”

“She’s been through some bad shit.”

“We’ve all been through bad shit, Otille.”

She scowled at him. It wasn’t like Tom to be so…flippant. At least not in a cold way. “Not the way she has.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not going to tell you, it’s not even any of my business.” She moved to go past him.

“You going to sleep out there with her?”

“Why would I—” she turned, frustrated. “What is the matter with you?”

He spun on her, his height letting him tower over her. “What is the matter with _you_?” he returned. “You tell me we’re through, then you throw yourself at me, and then the next night you lock your damn door. I can’t take this back and forth, Tillie.”

She drew a breath, calming herself. “I shouldn’t have done what I did. I was wrong to do that to you. I’m sorry.”

“Which part?”

“The other night. I was…I don’t know what the fuck I was, Tom. I’ve tried to tell you, tried to explain it but I can’t.”

“And yet you’re perfectly sane to play therapist to an obviously high troubled woman, and an autistic child,” Tom retorted.

“And it isn’t fair to keep playing with you,” she went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I promise what happened the other night won’t happen again, I swear it, and if it does, you need to turn me away.”

“I can’t do that,” Tom growled.

“Why not?”

“Because I—” he stopped, staring at her. “Because you need me,” he finished.

She wanted to tell him that he was wrong. And she also wanted to ignore what Tom was about to say, but had not said. Neither was true. It was useless to say so, though. Instead she started to turn away, determined to go about her business.

“You have time for everyone but me,” Tom said bitterly to her back. “Compassion for everyone but me.”

She sighed, looked at him over her shoulder. “Yes. Which is why you need to give up, Tom. Before we wind up loathing each other.”

“You already loathe me.”

“That isn’t true. “Tears pricked at her eyes, but she didn’t want him to see. “I…I just don’t have time for you anymore. There are people here with more pressing needs than yours.”

“Is that all I was? A pressing need?” He looked so petulant, his arms folded, body half bent as if he were slouching. “Was I part of your triage and now that I’m all patched up you’re on to the next mission of mercy?” He pushed away from the wall he was leaning on, his body language getting more agitated. “That’s what it really was, wasn’t it? Pity? That night, you felt sorry for me, sorry for the poor little boy who got his feelings hurt. That’s why I always had to come to you, it was always me chasing you—”

“If that was true I never would have agreed to move in with you,” she countered, tone low.

“Oh? You needed protection, didn’t you? You knew something was wrong with Noah long before the rest of us did. And now that he’s no longer a threat you don’t need me anymore.”

“You’re…are you drunk? What is wrong with you? You’re talking like a crazy person!” She dropped the sleeping bag, stepped back to him. “You want me to say that I used you? Yes, I did, Tom, I did use you. And you used me. And maybe we did care about each other in the process and maybe we still do, but you have to let this go. Things are jumpy enough around here without you acting like some possessive ex-boyfriend!”

He glared down at her. “You know, I lost everything too. But at least I had my dignity. Thanks for taking that, too.”

“Then take it back and man up! Julianna is already on edge because of all the men here and if you keep up this behavior and she sees it, it’s not going to help things.”

Tom shook his head, disgust in his eyes. “That woman scares the shit out of me,” he grunted, but pulled himself together. “Fine. I’ll stay away from you. If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

She turned, picked up the sleeping bag, and left.


	16. I'm Real. Are You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tillie leaves on her own (again), and finds curious things.

The next few days passed in a tense holding of breath.

On the third night, Julianna finally came inside and picked a room for herself. She insisted on having late guard shifts, to keep her outside at night, and Mason was happy to oblige her. She was not comfortable, but her hackles seemed to have lowered.

A large part of it, Tillie suspected, came from the fact that Mason had sort of assimilated her into his council. With Stuart and Noah both gone, there were vacancies to be filled – Robert assumed Noah’s role as the one Mason relied on most to keep things secure. Tom had already been pulled in, and Julianna, as the representative from the new group, was also invited. Long evenings were spent by Mason, Phillip, Tom, and Julianna in the dining room, talking about things, mostly filling in Julianna with their plans and schemes, and discussing ways to make things more stable.

This hand in running things seemed to give Julianna confidence. Although it was clear that she didn’t quite trust anyone – and it seemed somehow that Tom was bearing the brunt of that distrust, as she steered clearest of him when they were not in their dining-room-meetings – she slowly began to accept her place, and her tension levels started to decline.

Truthfully, Tillie was starting to feel very lonely. Everyone had an occupation but her. Robert and Phillip spent a lot of time with Fred, helping him set up his cameras and test his systems, learning how to work the monitors and make appropriate adjustments. Mason told all of them at dinner one evening that he was hoping this new system would reduce the number of man-hours needed on guard duty outside. Tillie would sneak into the room and watch the proceedings, and Fred was always happy to talk to her, show her how things worked, but it seemed his interest in her was waning with his new toys.

It was the hardest when the four would retire to the dining room. Tom avoided her like she asked, and Mason rarely spoke to her directly, and with both of them locked away, she felt as if it were somehow personal. Against her.

Maybe she wasn’t wrong.

A week passed like this. The pattern of life shifted, just enough, and she was on the edge now. And it was her own doing, she knew this.

Why had she done this?

Even Phillip, who had always watched out for her, barely spoke to her anymore – not out of any hostility, but because it was obvious that he and Heidi were utterly smitten with each other. Which was lovely and grand and she was thrilled for them.

But she spent most of her days alone. Doing the laundry, doing her guard duty, but floating through her life.

It was too much.

So she left again. Very early one morning, she slipped out the front door, just like she had the last time.

She barely got to the end of the drive when she realized how absolutely childish this was. They weren’t paying attention to her, so she decided to create drama and just leave? Who knew what would happen? She had already made things bad for herself, this was going to make them worse.

She stopped, turned back. There was one way she could do this without causing trouble. At least, it would make it clear that she wasn’t being childish, she was just making a choice.

Going back up the walk, she headed for the dining room. She knew he would be there. He spent so much time there, in that long room, sitting at the head of that long table, staring down it, vacantly. She knew he grieved. She knew losing Stuart had hurt him more than it could ever hurt her, more than anyone. She felt so bad for him, but she also knew he was beyond her reach.

“Mason.”

She didn’t knock, just went inside, closing the door behind her, and walked unceremoniously over to where he sat, stopping a bit to his right, her hand resting on the back of the long chair at his right hand. He glanced up at her, expression neutral, but she could sense his tension, as she had avoided him as carefully as he had avoided her.

“I’m going to leave again,” she said. “You don’t have to worry, or come after me. I won’t see any Walkers, and even if I do, I’m not worried. You’re not responsible for me. I’m making this choice. I want to go and I’m going to go alone. And I wanted to tell you because I didn’t want you or anyone wondering what had happened, or thinking I was just trying to…I don’t know. Upset everyone.”

He considered her for a very long few minutes. Then he said, softly, “And you expect to just come back?”

“Do you not want me to?” she asked, plainly, although her heartbeat started to accelerate. The fact that if she left, it would be for good, had not quite occurred to her. Was she ready for that?

He shrugged. “You can come back, as long as you don’t bring any trouble with you.” He didn’t ask how long she would be gone, or even where she wanted to go. He seemed completely indifferent to all of it.

“Thank you,” she said. She turned and left. It was much easier to walk down the drive that time.

Her feet carried her. She wasn’t quite sure where, but she started to recognize her surroundings. The empty parking lot. The building surrounded by the high black iron gate.

This was where she had seen the woman dressed all in black. The nun.

For a moment, all Tillie could do was stare at it. It was silent, and still, but not dead. There was a hum about it, something familiar she couldn’t place. As if it didn’t quite belong to where it was, if it were just sitting in a spot in time, waiting to move.

Slowly, she lowered herself to the ground. Her long jeans kept the small pebbles and gravel from the concrete from digging into her legs as she settled herself, but the sun was climbing and the heat was starting to pulse on her back.

Tillie didn’t know exactly what she was doing. She was a good fifteen feet from the building, but she could see through the vines that had grown over the gate, into the yard. It looked like things were growing in there – it seemed to contain an order, a _healthiness_ that was lacking in the world around it. She wished she could go inside, but there was no entrance. She couldn’t even tell where the gate once opened, but it must have, at some point, for people to have gone inside, right?

Time passed. The sun climbed over her and then slowly started to sink down the other way. It went through the trees, long rays of light tickling the corners of her eyes. She felt sleepy, languid, almost, and wondered that her legs weren’t asleep from where she had them tucked in front of her.

Then, with no fanfare, the door opened, and the woman in the long black robes appeared. She seemed to be humming softly to herself, and did not see Tillie as she went into the enclosed yard. She stopped at the edge of the porch and looked down, seeing something that Tillie could not see, and then bent down and picked up three bundles of fur. Bundles that were not alive, but had been.

Rabbits. Big ones, with long ears.

Tillie almost yelped. From what she could tell, the nun had not expected to find these animals there, just lying in the yard, but did not seem surprised by it. She draped them over her arm and turned back to the building, disappearing through the door for a long moment before returning to her business.

This time, she went deeper into the yard, and pulled up her skirt so she could kneel. She half disappeared through the foliage, but Tillie could see she was picking things. It seemed the garden was yielding its fruit, although what it could be, Tillie had no idea. She didn’t have a head for growing things and their seasons.

When the nun had gathered enough into a basket, she stood up again, and as she turned, her eye caught Tillie’s.

Tillie didn’t move.

They stared at each other, both in curiosity, but neither in fear. Tillie felt her thudding heartbeat, but it was in anticipation. Would the woman speak to her? She desperately wanted her to, she found.

Finally, the nun stepped closer to the gate. “Are you real this time?” she asked. She had a warm voice, sweet, not old or shaky like Tillie had been led to believe all nuns possessed – too many times watching _The Sound of Music_ , maybe, had given her that idea. Her mother had hated that movie.

“I am,” Tillie replied. “Are you?”

The nun nodded. She wore all white – a white cloth even surrounded her face. On top of her head was a long black cloth that Tillie could only call a veil, and another black cloak covered her shoulders and fell all the way down her back to her feet. It didn’t look like a terribly comfortable get-up, but it was far less complicated than some outfits she’d seen. “My name is Sister Mary of St. Pio of Pietrelcina,” she said. “Named for Padre Pio. Have you heard of him?”

Tillie shook her head. “Admittedly, I’m not familiar with Catholic saints. I was raised a Baptist.”

“Ah. Well, you can call me Sister Mary Pio.”

Tillie’s head briefly swam with how her father used to make fun of nuns. Calling them things like Sister Mary Margarita, or Sister Mary Handlebars, for how their habits could be so big and obnoxious. She blinked a few times. “Do all of you have names like that? The Sister Mary thing?”

Sister Mary Pio smiled. She had a nice smile. It was hard to determine her features, with all the black and white framing her, but Tillie had the feeling that the woman wasn’t much older than her own mother. Maybe Elanora’s age at best. “Yes. In our order, we all honor Mary the Mother of God in our names. The other one comes from a patron saint we’ve chosen. In my case, St. Pius of Pietrelcina. But I prefer to go by what he was known best as, Padre Pio.”

“Are there…are there more of you?” Tillie asked.

Sr. Mary Pio nodded. “Yes. Although I am the one charged with the outdoor duty. It’s my job to bring in the food.”

“And what does everyone else do? I mean, do you have a guard patrol, or something?”

The nun shook her head, causing the black veil to flutter. “No. We don’t find it necessary.”

“But what if Walkers bunch up on the walls?”

“Walkers?” The older woman frowned at her. “You mean the Dead?”

Tillie nodded.

“They don’t come up here,” Sr. Mary Pio said simply.

“Never?”

“Nope.” Sister smiled. “Do you see them often? Where you live?”

“I haven’t seen any…actually walking, no. Not since the beginning.”

“No? Curious.”

“The people I live with have just come to accept it,” Tillie said.

“Hm.” The nun considered her. “So what brings you so far from the people you live with, up here, alone? I mean, you don’t see the Dead at all? You don’t find them a danger to you?”

Tillie considered what question to answer first – if any. It wasn’t like this person seemed to be a threat. Tillie didn’t consider for a moment that Sister might be lying to her, but knowing that she was possibly going to be asked later what she’d seen, or who she’d seen…

No. Tillie decided right then she wasn’t going to tell the others about Sister Mary Pio.

“I saw you the last time I was up here. I was curious,” Tillie said.

“Ah, so you were real that time, too,” Sister said.

“Why did you ask if I was real?” Tillie asked.

“Because I’ve seen you. Before.”

“A few days ago--?”

“No. Before then. Not all the way Before, but…” She looked down at the beads dangling at her waist. Tillie thought it was a strange thing to use for a belt, a bunch of beads. There was a cross hanging off the end, with something glinting silver on it – Tillie knew enough that it was called a crucifix. At first she thought the practice rather gruesome, putting a carving of a dead body on the cross, because after all, Christ had risen from the dead, so why…?

“I’ve had a few visions in my time. Nothing terribly dramatic. The first one I had was in the first month, after this crisis started. We were usually pretty well stocked, food wise, but the rest of my sisters and I were concerned about what we were going to do, before supplies got too low. We considered going out and scavenging, but then I had vision, and the next morning…” She gestured to the plants behind her. “They weren’t even in season yet, but there they were, in full fruit.”

Tillie stood, her legs protesting after being still for so long, but she made her way closer to the gate to see the vegetable plants. It was a full garden, and there were bright red tomatoes peeking out at her from between green leaves. Was it the time of year for tomatoes?

“After that, it’s been small things, but necessary for survival.” She turned her gaze back to Tillie.

“So your vegetable garden just…appeared?”

“We had planted it, but it was going to take time to grow enough to feed all of us indefinitely. But suddenly the vegetables were just there, fully developed. It was a bit startling. But then again, Dead men and women walking is pretty startling, so we’ve been a bit…desensitized to it, I guess.”

“And…and you saw me?” Tillie asked, tearing her gaze back to the nun. “You saw me in one of your…visions?”

Sister just nodded. “A few times.”

“I…uh…” There were little blue and green wiggly worms crawling up the sides of her vision. Tillie felt her stomach roll and shudder, and backed away from the gate. “I have to go.”

“All right. I’m sure this won’t be the last time we talk. Maybe when you come back, you can tell me—”

But Tillie didn’t hear her. She had already started walking away. And in a few moments, she was running.


	17. Needless Danger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tillie returns and finds out what's been happening while she was gone.

Julianna was the first to greet her upon her return. Julianna, who looked relieved to see her.

“Thank God you’re back,” she said, catching Tillie in the foyer where she’d just come through the front door. Which was still unlocked. “Things around here got pretty buggy when we found out you left.”

“Buggy?” Tillie echoed.

Julianna looked around, as if making sure they were alone. It was unlikely that anyone would come through this door – their patrols, and Fred’s cameras, kept careful watch, but still, Tillie was going to have to see about keeping this door locked. When she wasn’t using it to escape.

“Mason and Tom nearly had it out a few hours ago. I don’t know who figured out you were gone first, but we were in a meeting, talking about security shifts, that kind of crap, when he just stormed in and started yelling at Mason that you were gone and that we had to go find you.”

Why Tom would continue to care at this point…it baffled her. She listened in rapt silence as Julianna went on.

“Mason told him, cold as ice, that you had told him you were leaving, that you were on your own and would come back if you wanted to. Tom about shit a brick. If he was yelling before he was screaming then, saying he was going to go look for you himself if Mason didn’t care anymore. He went on about how Mason was just pissed at you because you wouldn’t let him kill Noah – was that the guy in the video?”

Tillie nodded, pale.

“Yeah, that was some fucked up shit.” Julianna looked down, seeming a bit shaken by something, but then drew a breath and went on. “Mason told Tom that if he went after you, that was his business, but not to come crying to him if he got his brains eaten by a Walker. I thought Tom was going to hit him, I swear to God. They wound up doing one of those stupid stare-down things that men do sometimes. Tom took off, I don’t think he left the compound, but I haven’t seen him since.”

Tillie could picture it. Tom, with his intense stare, several inches taller than Mason, but Mason taking no shit. Her stomach twisted uncomfortably.

“What is up with you and Mason, anyway?” Julianna went on, derailing her thoughts. “I thought you were…I don’t know, he seemed to think you were special, from what I heard, but now it’s like you’re a leper or something. I even asked him about it, but he didn’t want to talk…at least not to me. I told him it was a shitty way of treating someone you cared about just because they did something you didn’t like. As a leader, he’s supposed to be better than that. I told him if this was how it was here, maybe me and Heidi and Fred hadn’t really traded up. That seemed to get him, but I don’t know…” she sighed. “Anyway, why did you leave to begin with?”

“I’ve been…checking something out. Something important,” Tillie said.

“More people?”

“Kind of. Not really, but…it’s…it’s hard to explain.”

“You shouldn’t go by yourself, Tillie,” Julianna said with a frown. “Next time, come ask me, I’d be happy to watch your back.”

“That’s sweet,” Tillie said with a smile. “I appreciate it. But I think I need to go alone.”

“Sensitive situation? Yeah, I guess I can understand that. The thing with you and Walkers is borderline creepy, though. You can’t expect it to hold out forever. The law of averages and all…”

“Where’s Tom?” Tillie croaked.

Julianna shrugged. “Like I said, I haven’t seen him since.”

“Tillie,” came Phillip’s surprised voice.

“Hey Phil,” Tillie said.

“Glad you’re all right,” he said, although his tone was a bit terse. “Maybe you want to go reassure Tom that you’re okay?”

“Where is he?” she asked.

“Billiard room. He and Fletcher and Mason are down there.”

“Mason?” Tillie echoed.

Phillip shrugged, looking from Tillie to Julianna’s equally shocked expressions. “Guess they kissed and made up.”

Tillie screwed her courage to the sticking place and headed for the stairs that led down into the billiard room. It was more than billiards, though, the whole level was made of games. There was even a very long bowling alley that lined a hallway that led to a swimming pool, but it was drained, and none of them were much into bowling. Instead, the half that contained the billiard table also had several dart boards, and shelves of old games that were made of much classier materials than cardboard and paper. There was a stand with a classic version of Monopoly, but everything was made from wood and metal.

Slowly, she descended the stairs, listening keenly for their conversation. She could hear Mason’s deep grumbly tones, Tom’s smoother, posh baritone, and Fletcher laughing about something. There was the clicking of the enameled balls, and when she finally got low enough to see the scene – and be seen as well – she could see Tom rising from having just broke the table.

He looked rumpled. The blue shirt he wore was not clean – she felt a bit of a sting, it had been her job to keep their clothes clean and she’d neglected it lately – and he seemed more unkempt than usual. Sure, his hair had grown out in the last months, and his facial hair was always on the verge of being scruffy, but he just seemed…disheveled.

At her footfall, he looked up, and their eyes met. He seemed to freeze, staring at her, and then glaring, before bending again to aim his pool stick at the little white ball.

The shot was loud, and hard. It sent balls flying in several directions, but successfully sunk several into pockets.

“Dammit,” Mason grunted, and then realized where Tom was shooting those daggers from his eyes. He looked over his shoulder. “Hey Til.”

Rather casual, considering he hadn’t had two words for her for some time now.

“Hey Mase.” Her eyes flicked to their leader and then back to Tom. She was afraid to come all the way down the stairs. Tom seemed coiled, like a cat about to strike. He looked away, pretending to focus on lining up his next shot.

“Um.” Well. This wasn’t going to go smoothly. And in that situation, less was more. “Just wanted you guys to know I was back.”

“Okay,” Mason’s tone was borderline friendly. “Thanks. Glad you’re okay.”

She nodded, and then turned to head back upstairs.

“Are you going to do it again?” Tom asked. His tone was dark, threatening. She couldn’t bring herself to turn around when she answered.

“Yes.”

There was the crash of wood hitting wood, and the clack of enameled balls scattering in chaos. She heard Mason grunt, “Fuck, Tom!”

“WHY?” Tom practically shouted at her.

She whirled around. “I said we were done!” she shouted down at him. “I can do whatever I damn well want and I don’t answer to you!”

“That doesn’t mean you have the right to go running off and getting yourself killed!” Tom retorted, approaching the foot of the stairs.

“Easy, Tom,” Mason said, voice low in warning. “She’s right.”

“Maybe she is, but it’s still fucking crazy!” Tom said, his voice only marginally lower than before.

Softly, Fletcher cleared his throat. “I hate to say it, but he has a point, Tillie. I mean, you go out without protection, on your own…seems just…wrong. You know?”

The voice of reason. Tillie lowered her eyes. She didn’t want to tell them. It felt like a betrayal of some kind. But they were right. It was selfish of her to make them worry about her and give them no good reason.

“I know,” she conceded. “But it’s something I have to do. When the time is right,” she added, looking up, but avoiding Tom’s scathing eyes, “I will tell you what I’m doing. I promise. It’s not something that would hurt anyone here, I promise.”

“Course not,” Mason said dismissively. “Just…you’re not living in a vacuum, Tillie. Your actions effect the rest of us. Regardless,” he added, shooting Tom a look, “of your personal relationships.”

“I know.” She sighed, finally daring to look at Tom. “I’m sorry. You just have to be patient with me. It’ll make sense. I promise.”

Tom snorted, and then started to climb the stairs. He brushed past her, and it felt like a glacial breeze.   
“Whatever,” she heard him mutter as he passed.

She stood there for a long moment, debating. Then, something got the better of her, and she took off after him.

“TOM!” she called. Why was she doing this? She was only going to make this complicated mess between them worse. But something in her couldn’t deal with his anger, couldn’t just let it go that he was so worried about her that he threatened (even if he didn’t carry it out) to come after her himself. She felt bad. She knew his feelings, whatever they were, were unselfish. They weren’t together, they weren’t going to be together, and yet he still cared about her safety. “Tom, please!”

 

He stopped, somewhere in the maze of hallways, in between rooms, his shoulder heaving with angry breaths. He didn’t turn, except for his head, which didn’t quite glare at her over his shoulder, but instead out at some invisible vantage point. She could just see his eyes, not looking at her.

“What?” he snapped.

She stopped. She had no idea what to say. Worse, she knew anything she would say would just piss him off more.

“I’m sorry,” she heard herself saying.

“For what part?” He didn’t move, just continued to glare at some point just past his shoulder.

“For worrying you. But if I tell you when I’m going, I’m worried you’re going to want to follow me, or want someone else to follow me, and where I’m going, I have to go alone.”

Finally he turned. His glared softened, but he was still so rigid, so angry. “Why?” he demanded, incredulous.

She could only plead with him with her eyes, hands rising in a mildly helpless shrug. “Where I’m going…it’s not for everyone. I mean, I don’t want them to get scared off—”

“So it’s people you’re meeting?” he asked, stepping closer, his tone softening but his expression, still so enraged.

“Yes, but—”

“How do you know they aren’t dangerous?”

She almost laughed. Thank God she didn’t. “I can’t explain it—”

“Yes, your fall-back line,” he grunted, veering away from her, bristling. “You can never explain anything. Not a damn thing.” He turned, starting away again.

“Please!” she cried, closing her eyes. He froze for a moment.

“Unless the next words out of your mouth are an explanation of some sort, I don’t want to hear it,” he said.

It was the least angry she’d heard him yet. He sounded…sad. Defeated.

“It isn’t because I don’t trust you,” she tried. “It’s because I don’t understand it. I’m just following some kind of…intuition. I have to see this through. It doesn’t have anything to do with wanting to hurt you—”

He turned back, only half way. He looked down at her from his towering height, considering her.

“You think it doesn’t hurt, that you just cut me off, with no thought whatsoever for…” he stopped himself. He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Forget it. Do whatever you want, Tillie. You always do.”

And he walked away.


	18. The Real Competition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sr. Mary Pio knows a bit too much and Tillie gets smacked over the head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: The religious themes I've been threading throughout this story are coming home to roost.

The days passed. Tillie waited for a few of them before venturing out again. She told Mason, who would only nod at her. She did not tell Julianna, or Tom, for fear of the former trying to go with her and the latter of…she didn’t know. It would just hurt him more than she’d already hurt him.

She was tired of hurting him. She wished she could stop, but it didn’t seem to be in her power.

When she reached the convent, Sister Mary Pio was already out, on her knees in the garden. Tillie walked up to the fence, trying to make as much noise as her feet could on the concrete. A few scrapings of stones was the most she could manage without actually stomping her feet. The nun glanced up at her, shading her eyes from the afternoon sun.

“Hello, dear. I didn’t expect you back so soon.” Then she frowned. “You all right?”

Tillie approached the gate but didn’t get less than a few feet from it. “Do I not seem all right?”

“You look troubled.”

Considering the woman had met her once, this was a bit of insight she didn’t quite expect. Then again, Sr. Mary Pio had claimed to have seen her in visions, so… “The people I live with…they aren’t happy with me, going out alone like this. And I won’t tell them about you guys, so he’s even more frustrated with me.”

“He?”

Talking about Tom to this woman who had vowed her life to God – didn’t nuns call themselves brides of Christ? So wasn’t she like God’s wife? – it felt wrong to talk about her affair with Tom.

Sensing her hesitation, Sr. Mary Pio changed the subject. “So it doesn’t seem fair to ask you about the people you live with, since you won’t tell them about us…which we appreciate. But I am curious, what brought you up here? I mean, one doesn’t just go wandering about these parts.”

“You told the others about me?” she asked.

“Yes. I hope that’s all right. I sort of have to, considering they know I’m out here talking to someone.”

“Wouldn’t they just assume you’re talking to God? Or having a vision or something?”

Sr. Pio looked at her, and then her expression – on that strangely ageless face – looked highly amused. “Oh sweetie. To the first thing, we usually don’t talk out loud when we pray, unless we’re all praying together. Or we’re reciting something. I mean, you are familiar with the concept of prayer, yes?”

Tillie nodded, knowing she’d been a smartass.

“And as for the second, it’s in dreams that I’ve had my visions. If I were hallucinating, the other sisters would more likely think I needed a doctor.”

“Which you don’t have.”

“We do, actually. Sr. Mary Therese was a doctor before she joined us. Wasn’t that long ago, only about five years or so before…this.” She gave Tillie a bright smile. “So, how did you find us up here? I mean, why were you away from your group?”

It occurred to Tillie that in order to answer the question, she would be giving a lot of detail about where she lived and who she lived with. She didn’t see any particular reason not to trust Sr. Mary Pio. It wasn’t like these little nuns in this little garden enclosure were a threat to anyone. It was more like her and her group were the danger to people like them.

Still…it didn’t feel quite fair.

“There was an incident in my group,” Tillie said. “Two of them went on a scavenging mission and only one came back. The other was…a good friend of mine. I was upset and went to find his remains. I know it wasn’t a good idea, but…while I was out, I came across this place. Didn’t stay, of course, but…it wouldn’t leave my brain. So I had to come and see if it was real. If you were real.”

Sr. Mary Pio nodded. She continued pulling weeds and tossing then into one basket, and taking fresh vegetation that was edible and tossing it into another.

“It was something in your head? Something you couldn’t let go of?”

Tille’s next words surprised even her.

“There was this man in our group,” she said. “His name was Noah. I didn’t…I didn’t like him. I didn’t trust him. Something about him bothered me a lot. And he was the one on the scavenging mission who came back. I was so angry about the other one…my friend. His name was Stuart. I was convinced that Noah had been spying on me, and that for some reason…for some reason he hurt Stuart because of me. I don’t know why I thought that. I was sure of it, though. I had to go and see if I was right, I couldn’t let go of it.”

She paused. She hadn’t ever confessed that to anyone. Maybe in some way to Tom, telling him that night, as they waited for Stuart and Noah to come back, that she didn’t trust Noah. Tom telling her that there was no reason not to trust him.

“So this Stuart…” Sr. Mary Pio said, her tone neutral, “he was your good friend?”

“Yes.”

“And you think he was a target for Noah because of you? Was it because you had feelings for Stuart?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even realize the feelings I had for Stuart until he died.”

“Ah.”

“What?” Tillie heard her own snappish tone. She cleared her throat. “I mean, what does that mean?”

“It means,” Sr. Mary Pio said with a small smile, “that you may not have known you had feelings for this man, but Noah might have. You said it felt like he was watching you. Maybe Noah could see your feelings for Stuart. Do you think Noah might have had feelings for you as well?”

The thought of that made her belly feel like it was filled with a million little centipedes, all crawling over each other. “Not feelings. Something else.”

“Oh. One of those.”

Tillie’s curiosity piqued. “Those?”

“We live in an interesting world right now, Tillie,” the nun sighed. “Some have returned to their basest natures. Men, women…there’s the old standard of a cave man clubbing a woman and dragging her back to his cave. Some men are still like that, and in these circumstances, it would be the perfect opportunity to try it.”

Tillie’s thoughts instantly went to Julianna. “Yeah.”

“What you may have been sensing was that baser nature. That’s why you didn’t trust Noah. He may have been eliminating competition.”

“Well, I was with someone else, so I don’t know why he’d target Stuart.” Then she realized what she’d said, and waited for Sr. Mary Pio to say something…maybe something judgmental. Condemning.

“Interesting,” was all the woman said, as she kept at her work of weeding the plants. “You think Noah would have gone after him, too?”

“If he’s what you say, wouldn’t he have done that first?”

“Not really. Not if he thought that your partner, whoever he was, wasn’t as big of a threat.”

Tillie thought that was very weird. And even weirder were these insights this little nun who lived in this little cloister that was cut off from the whole wide world was having about the characters in their camp.

At Tillie’s silence, Sr. Mary Pio paused her work and looked at her. “May I ask if you ever found out what happened with Noah and Stuart?”

“We found out that Noah used Stuart as a human shield from a pack of Walkers,” Tillie said, her voice sounding distant and numb. “Our leader exiled him from the camp.”

Sr. Mary Pio frowned. “For that?”

“He was going to kill him. Stuart was our leader’s brother.”

“Oh. Well, that’s too bad. An emotional decision always comes back to haunt you.”

“He killed Stuart!”

“Yes. And in a real sense, yes, he murdered him, he chose his own life over the other man’s. Which is exactly what Noah would do, considering what you’ve told me about him. But it’s a human thing. Any other person in your camp, even your leader, would be sorely tempted to do the same in a similar situation. Some people’s instinct to survive overrides any moral code, forget about compassion.”

“And that’s okay?” Tillie snapped.

“Of course not,” was the gentle reply. “But it’s human. Natural. Forgivable. Who knows what you or I would do in a situation like that, Tillie?”

That stilled her.

_But then again, I don’t see Walkers._

“Something you said before,” Tillie said, her brain chasing another route so she didn’t have to think about the implications of Sr. Mary Pio’s statement. “About how Tom wasn’t a threat.”

“Tom?”

Crap. “My…my partner at the time.”

“He’s not anymore?”

“No.”

“Okay. What about it?”                    

“Why wouldn’t Noah see Tom as a threat when I was _with_ him, but see Stuart as one when I _wasn’t_ with him? That doesn’t make sense.”

Sr. Mary Pio sat back on her haunches and considered this question. “You aren’t with this Tom anymore, right?”

“Right.”

“Why not?”

Damn. The woman was too good. “I…I felt like I was using him. Or he was using me. Or we were using each other.”

“Why?”

“I was, at the time, the only woman in the camp. When we got together.”

Sr. Mary Pio grunted. “That makes sense,” she muttered.

“What does?”

“Noah,” was the answer, “but back to Tom. You think Tom was with you because you were the only woman in the camp? You had your choice, but he didn’t. And that bothered you.”

“Yes, but it’s more complicated than that.”

“It always is. Why did you pick Tom, when there were others? What was it about him that made you pick him?”

“Because…he was Tom.” She struggled, not wanting to say it out loud. “He was a movie star, Before…he was famous and I knew him.”

“So he was familiar. Handsome?”

“Very.”

“And you think you were using him.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“So that’s why he wasn’t that much of a threat to Noah. You were with Tom, but not attached to him. You were attached to Stuart. He was the real competition.”

Tillie stared at her. That Sr. Mary Pio would know this about her, look into her and see how she’d been thinking, how she had wished she’d made a wiser choice when it came to Stuart and Tom and her situation…

“You said you only have visions in your sleep,” Tillie said.

Sr. Mary Pio laughed. “I wasn’t always a nun, Tillie. I had an ordinary career before I heard my vocation calling. I made a living off my intuition. Reading people. One could even say I was a bit of a…con-artist.” She sighed. “Another life. So many lives…”

“But Noah had to know… I mean, if he was so insightful, which I don’t think he was, he would have known that he disgusted me,” Tillie said.

“People are so good about seeing other people and never see themselves,” Sr. Mary Pio said. “I know this from personal experience, Tillie.” She stood up. Her basket was full of goodies. “You might want to head home, the light is starting to go. I’m due for the Evening Office. I’ll see you next time.” And she went inside, leaving Tillie to stare at the empty yard for nearly a full ten minutes before she headed back to the compound.


	19. One of Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tillie realizes what she really wants, Tom breaks the rules, and Tillie questions her sanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the deal.
> 
> I am taking a major break from fanfic. I want to stick to original stuff. I want to rewrite many of my current fics on here and make them into Original Characters instead of T.H. RPF's. That's why I took down "Half a Psychopath," although more for the fact that I can't get into it right now, but it may come in time. Night Manager fanfic isn't the same as RPF so I can live with that. I want to rewrite "Bed of Roses" and I want to write a sequel to "As You Act" but I want to convert both to original fic first, which will take some time. 
> 
> However, I didn't want to leave this unfinished. I finally have it all figured out. There will be one more chapter after this and then an epilogue. Thank you for coming back! Hope this doesn't disappoint.

Tillie came back more and more often in the coming days. Usually she tried to wait at least a day between visits, maybe two, but soon that became impossible.

Sr. Mary Pio had the ability to understand her like no one she’d ever met in her life. She told her so many things, things she never thought she would tell her, or anyone.

Mostly about Tom.

The nun had already established a pattern of not judging, so this made Tillie more comfortable. Not that she ever shared graphic details, but she did give the outline of their time together. And more than an outline.

Her feelings for Tom at the beginning, seeing him as someone from Before, a dream never realized, a fantasy that could never come true.

The ups and downs of being with him.

Breaking it off, and how that was hurting him.

But there were other things to talk about, too.

Like why the more Tillie came here, the more she wanted to stay.

Why did she want to stay?

It made no sense to her. Life in her compound was pretty good. They had good food, their environment was nearly luxurious, and most of all, it was clean. They were safe, protected. The people there took care of each other.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be there.

It was more that she wanted to be _here_. And she couldn’t quite understand why.

Her old childhood dream about being a nun, the times she had secretly dressed up by putting a cloth over her head and would hide in a tent of her own making, pretending to pray…and then lying to her mother when asked -- because what sane seven-year-old is silent for a solid hour?-- saying instead she was a princess who was locked in her tower and was waiting for a prince to come save her. Those memories started to become clearer to her.

Was she remembering it correctly? Those times she knelt in her tent and would quietly talk…pretending she was talking to God? When she was, really, truly, actually talking to God?

When had that stopped? Probably around ten, when she started to realize she was getting too old for this kind of pretend. When puberty started to take hold of her and turn her mind toward other things. When her mother started to pressure her to pay more attention to her appearance and her grades and discovering her other talents.

Something about being inside those walls…it was some kind of compulsion. Some magnetic force that tugged and tugged at her.

Until, finally, she asked.

Not directly. More like questions about what it was like to be a nun. What it was like to live inside a building and never leave it. Never go anywhere, see anyone other than the women you lived with. Truthfully, the thought of a world with only women made Tillie a bit sick to her stomach…not that she was hung up on men, but the men/women dynamic had always been important to her. The men she knew, starting with her father, had always brought a kind of relief to her life, a balance. The thought of a world totally off-balance worried her. Sure, women were great, but so were men, in their way.

She’d always been keenly aware, in that time between Elanora’s death and then finding Julianna and Heidi, of her delicate status when she was the only woman in the camp. Had that been part of the reason she’d let things with Tom go on the way they did? Maybe she really did want the protection.

What protection was there when there were no men at all, only women?

She talked about these things at length with Sr. Mary Pio. Sometimes the sun would be setting before Tillie headed home. And when she returned to the camp, she was keenly aware of Tom’s eyes on her, although he kept his distance and never spoke to her.

Two weeks of this passed before Tillie finally asked directly. Sr. Mary Pio was not going to offer, apparently, and it was time to just put it out there, she decided.

“So what would it take for me to…to be able to…join you?”

She almost expected Sr. Mary Pio to question her further, but she didn’t. The woman, as always, understood her, even when she was awkward and embarrassed.

“I would unlock the gate and you would come inside.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s the beginning. You would be welcome here, Tillie, but if you came in, it would be with the understanding that you wanted to stay. I assume by the word ‘join,’ you would want to become one of us?”

_One of us, one of us_ …she could almost hear the mocking of invisible people, telling her she would become a brainwashed little robot and join the flock of dumb sheep. Or was that her mother’s voice?

“Yes.” Her answer felt choked. As if she were fighting not to cry.

“Then you would start to learn. You could think of it a bit like going to school.”

“Would I have to wear—“ she pointed to her own head.

Sr. Mary Pio smiled. “Not yet. We wouldn’t even make you cut your hair for a while. It would take time, years, before you officially ‘joined up.’” She even made air-quotes.

“And what if, for whatever reason, I realized that I…wasn’t happy? That I wanted to leave again?”

“You could leave. We’d never keep you here against your will. But it isn’t a swinging door. Not something to be taken lightly.”

“I understand.”

Although she didn’t, not fully, she realized later that night when she tried to sleep. Tried, and failed. It was before dawn when she finally couldn’t lie in bed anymore, got up and headed out.

And didn’t realize someone was following her.

The pre-dawn was cool and quiet. Well, maybe not really quiet – so many birds, so many types. Tillie sat on the concrete in front of the black iron gate, knowing perfectly well it would be some time before Sr. Mary Pio came out. From their conversations, she knew the nuns were very early risers, and prayed before and after breakfast. It would be long after sunrise when Sr. Mary Pio came out.

In the meantime, Tillie sat quietly and listened to the sounds around her. The breeze, the trees, the insects that buzzed here and there. She felt the presence of this little place, gently probed the power it held over her, tried to focus on what it was exactly that was pulling at her so hard.

Then she heard a footstep behind her. Gravel underneath a large foot. She jumped up, spinning around, but his voice came before she could even gain any kind of defensive posture.

“It’s me, Ottille. Tom.”

She gaped at him. Standing in the middle of the deserted parking lot, looking like he had absolutely no shame, was Tom.

“What…what are you doing here?” Stupid question. But all she could manage to say.

“I’ve actually being following you for the last few days. This is just the first time I’ve let you see me.”

The knowledge floored her. She shook her head, disbelief all she could feel.

“How?”

“Robert taught me a few tricks.”

She put her hands on her hips, trying to calm her breathing. She backed away from him as he came closer. “Days?” she said, picking up on his previous words. “You’ve been following me for days?”

He nodded, his expression completely sober. And solemn.

“I’m worried about you, Ottille. I know I’ve already said that a million times, but even more now. After what I’ve seen.”

“What you’ve _spied on,_ you mean,” she growled.

He sighed, looking a tiny bit guilty. “Yes. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve not been able to make out much of what you’ve been saying. But that isn’t…I mean, Tillie. You’ve been coming here for days. Sitting on the concrete. And you’re talking to…to empty space!”

She blinked up at him. “What?”

“Whoever you’re asking questions…they aren’t there, Tillie.” She scowled, and he looked more distressed than she’d ever seen him at her disbelief. “I’ve been trying to get a better look, at first I thought I just couldn’t hear them because they were too far away, and then I thought I couldn’t see them because of all the vines on the gate, but…I’m sorry, Tillie. I’m so sorry.” He reached for her, and she backed away. “Ottille, please, please come back with me. We’ll figure it out, we’ll find some way to help you—”

“I don’t need help,” she snapped. “You’re wrong. I’m not sitting out here talking to myself! I’m not…I’m not crazy!”

“I’m not saying you are. But this world is doing weird things to us, Ottille. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility if you’re dealing with it…in this way.”

She glared at him. “I don’t care that you can’t see her, Tom. She’s there. I’ve been talking to her for weeks now and I would have figured it out of she was some kind of hallucination!”

“Who? It’s a she? Who is this woman? What’s her name?”

“Sister Mary Pio,” Tillie answered.

“A sister? You mean, like a nun?” His expression contorted in confusion and then, oh so briefly, in disgust, and then realization. “You remember what you told me, right? All those years ago you thought you wanted to be a nun? That makes sense, you know. It’s a comforting memory, in these harsh times and all these changes—”

“Stop it, Tom,” she snapped. “Stop it! She’s real. Trust me, there’s no way she isn’t real. I don’t care that you can’t see her, she’s all in black so it could just be shadows that make it hard for you to see her. She should be coming out soon, you can sit here with me if you want,” she turned around and made to get back into her criss-cross position on the ground again, looking up at him. “I’ll prove it to you!”

Tom stared down at her for a long minute, and then took his position beside her, his legs folded under him like hers.

Long minutes of silence passed. His eyes flicked to her continuously, and she struggled to ignore it.

She wasn’t hallucinating. She wasn’t sick, she wasn’t crazy.

“It doesn’t make sense that I’d have some kind of psychotic break _now,_ ” she said rationally, after a bit of time had passed and the beginning heat of the day began to beat onto their shoulders. “I mean, if it had happened earlier, when things were really bad—”

“You were in survival mode,” Tom said calmly. “Sheer self-preservation would have prevented it.”

“But when the worst of the stress passes, why does it make sense to happen then?”

“Because it can,” Tom said with a shrug. “I don’t know, Tillie. All I know is that I’ve been listening to you murmuring at an empty space for the last four days. And hearing nothing replying to you. I mean, nothing. What am I supposed to think?”

She felt her earlier outrage at him begin to return. “Why would you do that? Why would you _spy_ on me? Why would you invade my privacy like this?”

“Because I—” he started to whirl on her, then stopped himself. “You already knew I was worried about you,” he began again, this time calmer.

“That doesn’t justify violating my trust like this!”

He looked at her, eyes so wounded, so full of hurt, like she’d kicked an animal that had just wanted to love her…no…no, he wasn’t going to…

“Tillie,” he said, turning his body toward her, leaning toward her. “This is the worst possible time for me to say this, but I have to.”

No. She was frozen, couldn’t stop him. But with all her might she willed him to stop talking.

“I should have admitted this so long ago. If I had, maybe none of this would have happened. But I do. I love you, Ottille.”

She stared at him. Then, as if some force outside her body controlled her, she felt her fist being lifted up.

And she punched him in the arm with all her might.

“Ow!”

She was on her feet, moving away from him. “You…you can’t say that to me! You can’t!”

He rose to his feet, rubbing his arm. “It’s true. I promise it’s true. I wouldn’t say something like that if I didn’t mean it. And I’m sorry I was such a coward that I didn’t say it sooner. Maybe if I had, you wouldn’t have left me.”

“But you’re telling me this NOW?!” she shrieked. “How can you…do you have any idea how this sounds? _You’re crazy, but I love you anyway_ —”

Tom reached for her, and finally, finally, she let him touch her. She was too stunned and too upset to fight him off. “Ottille. One doesn’t have anything to do with the other. I’m sorry I spied on you, I’m sorry I’ve violated your privacy.”

“But you did it anyway,” she rasped.

“I did,” he confessed, “because I couldn’t stop worrying about you. It was driving me crazy. And when I saw you sneaking out a few days ago, I knew I just couldn’t let it go anymore. I should have told you right away what I was doing, not let it drag on like it did, but I was…I wanted to be sure. I wanted to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing. I waited for as long as I could, but…” he shook his head, his expression so sad. “Please. Please, come back with me. Let’s try and figure this out. You aren’t alone, Ottille.”

She pushed his hands from her.  Her rational self railed against what he was telling her. Could she be hallucinating? Was it possible? Her anger at what he’d done was derailed by the knowledge of why he’d done it. If the situation were reversed, wouldn’t she have done the same? If she were actually having some kind of mental breakdown, could he sense it? Didn’t she need someone to help her? He’d taken an awful risk, and she knew Tom, she didn’t believe he would be so manipulative as to lie about this, that he would sink so low as to make her think she was having a breakdown, just to give him an excuse to play savior and drive her back to him. Whatever else she thought of him, she knew he was being honest. It was his nature.

For whatever reason, he couldn’t see Sr. Mary Pio. What did that mean?

He was looking at her, waiting for her next move. She began to tremble, fear overwhelming her. She sank to the ground, sitting as she was before, her head in her hands.

Gently, Tom knelt before her. He didn’t touch her, not for some time. When she raised her head, she looked toward the convent.

“Would you…” she started, then hesitated. If they’d been overheard inside, it was entirely possible that Sr. Mary Pio wasn’t going to come out, just to keep all of them safe. Even if she heard their conversation, though? Wouldn’t she come out just to prove Tillie wasn’t crazy?

Or…not?

“Can we wait?” she asked, looking up at him, pleading. “Can we wait here, until…I don’t know, sunset? If the sun goes down and she doesn’t come out, I’ll go back with you. I won’t fight. Just…can we please wait a bit?”

Tom nodded and settled himself in beside her again.

They didn’t speak again.

And nobody came out.

When the sun was peeking low through the trees, Tillie did as she promised. She returned to the compound with Tom.


	20. Fight or Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tillie struggles to process and Tom just keeps digging his own grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this chapter grew too big so now it's two chapters. One more to go and then a SHORT epilogue. :)

“Please say something.”

“What do you want me to say? You’re making me question my sanity. There’s not a lot I can say to that.”

They were still walking back toward the compound, in a heavy, tense silence. Which Tom had just broken.

“I still don’t understand why you would follow me in the first place.”

His anguished sigh told her much more than his next words. “Why do you think?”

She felt a surge of anger. There were other emotions, all of them conflicting. Guilt. Compassion. Shame. Pity. A healthy dose of self-pity. She shot him a look, and his big blue eyes stabbed at her. Once in the Before he’d compared himself to a golden retriever. A rejected, dejected golden retriever was what walked beside her right now. He looked utterly miserable.

“Are you going to tell the others?” she asked, feeling panic fluttering in her chest.

He blinked, looked away. “I…I’m not…I figured maybe we would figure that out…together.”

Her answering sigh was pure frustration. The thought that everyone would think she was having a psychotic break… “Please don’t,” she said, very softly.

“Ottille, if something is wrong, all of us want to help you—”

Reflexively, his hand had started to reach for her. She flinched back from it.

“Nothing is wrong. Just because you didn’t see Sr. Mary Pio doesn’t mean she’s a figment of my imagination.”

“Then we can figure it out,” he said, undeterred. “Maybe someone else can go back there with you, wait with you. Trust me when I said I waited for as long as I could to say something, I didn’t _want_ to think you were talking to yourself.”

No, of course he didn’t. There was no ill will from him at all, she could feel only concern, compassion. And his stupid confession…she hated this. _Hated_ it. No matter how she kicked him, he wouldn’t go away. Damn him and his stupid…

“Why would say something like that to me?” she demanded, stopping and whirling on him. For a moment, Tom blinked, confused, but it didn’t take long to know what she meant.

“I know, it was awful, blurting it out like that,” he said, and in spite of the fact that he was a full foot taller than her, and towered over her, with his wide, lovely shoulders, he somehow seemed cowed. “I shouldn’t have.”

“How can it even be true? How could you possibly—”

He gave her a sharp look. She stilled, realizing how she sounded.

“I just mean…after everything? It just…doesn’t make sense to me.”

They stood there for a long moment. Tom looked down, apparently gathering his thoughts. Then he leveled his gaze at her, and it was much gentler this time.

“I sort of think of it as…like you and I were in an arranged marriage. We were in circumstances that sort of threw us together in an intimate way. And over time…I began to rely on it, and then relish it. I didn’t just need it, I wanted it. And I guess I just didn’t know how much until after you…” he looked away again. “It’s not unheard of,” he said, his gaze somewhere to her left. “I used to think that love had to be this immediate thing, this instant chemistry. At least, the spark that led to it felt like that. But now I know that it comes other ways, too. Although the realization of it, that can feel the same, when it’s a slower burn or something lightening quick – you realize with the same speed, so it always feels like it happens fast.” He shifted his eyes to hers, blinked. She could see his heart in them, and while part of her wanted so much to back away, not to get drawn into him again, there was another part that couldn’t turn him away. Not after making himself so vulnerable to her.

He saw it. He stepped a bit closer, as if she would bolt if he moved too quickly.

“I know this isn’t the right time,” he said, softly. “But when it is…I hope you could think, please, about us. About trying again. The right way, this time. I promise I won’t…I won’t put any pressure on you.”

She shifted uncomfortably. Fight or flight. Or surrender _. Your existence puts pressure on me_ , she thought, so loud she was sure she was going to say it.

“So what are we going to tell the others?” she asked.

“I figured we would go to Mason first,” he said, not missing a beat. As if he hadn’t expected her to answer. Hadn’t put any hope in his request.

And that broke her heart.

She gave a shaky nod. She didn’t want to tell anyone. She wanted to forget this. But what would happen tomorrow? She would wake up and want to go talk to Sr. Mary Pio. And Tom would know she was gone, and who knew what would happen then? Would he tell the others, without her present? Would he follow her again? This whole thing would just repeat on a tedious cycle. She had to _do_ something.

But what?

They trudged back the rest of the way in silence. The sun just finished setting and the evening twilight was turning into full night when they went into the camp, where the rest were eating dinner. The fact that Tom and Tillie were together drew a few heads, until it drew the rest. Tillie didn’t have any appetite and turned down the bowl of stew she was offered. She went back to the door by the kitchen and watched as Tom approached Mason and spoke to him quietly.

Mason looked at her. She felt a rush of shame. She should have gone to Mason on her own. Taken control of the situation, asked him to come talk to her in the dining room in private – whatever Tom thought he saw, it was her problem and hers alone. But the fact that she was questioning herself, that she was off-kilter, wondering if maybe Tom was right and she’d been conversing with a figment of her imagination for these last weeks…it slowed her thought process and let Tom have control.

Before she knew it, they were in the dining room, sitting at the end of the table, Mason at the head, Tom on his right, Tillie on his left.

And Tillie couldn’t bring herself to talk. Her tongue felt like stone.

Tom waited for her to talk, she could feel his eyes like a weight on her. Mason’s, too. Then finally, realizing she’d gone mute, Tom started to tell the story.

How he’d followed her. Watched for four days. Finally, after simply being unable to see who she was talking to, no matter what angle he tried, he confronted her.

“That doesn’t mean she’s talking to empty space,” Mason said, his tone worried at Tillie’s continued silence.

“No, it doesn’t,” Julianna’s voice cut in. They all three jolted when she entered the room. Glaring at Tom, Julianna said, “You’re not the only one who can spy on someone.”

“I didn’t mean to spy—” Tom started.

“What the hell else do you call it?” Julianna snapped.

The two glared at each other.

“All right,” Masons said, raising a hand. “We need to figure this out. We need someone other than Tom to go with Tillie, if she’ll let us, and see who she is talking to. I mean, that’s reasonable, and simple, right? Get more evidence?”

All three looked at Tillie.

“No,” Tillie said. And she got up and walked out.

She locked herself in her room. Finally alone, she could no longer hold herself together. She collapsed on her bed and sobbed until she fell asleep.

Morning offered no comfort. Just the cold memories of what happened. She still had no appetite, but someone had left a can of fruit at her door, and she knew she needed to eat. Her head wouldn’t be level if her body was weak. She ate as she walked toward the kitchen, devouring the canned fruit much faster than she would have thought, then disposing of the can in their garbage bin, which would eventually be rolled down the hill into the make-shift landfill they’d started to dig.

After avoiding everyone else in the compound, Tillie realized that there wasn’t much sense in moping around all day, so she started to do what she always did. She cleaned clothes.

She could feel everyone looking at her from the corner of their eyes. Whenever anyone was unfortunate enough to cross her path, anyway. She ignored them, sorting everyone’s garments and putting them back in their rooms, clean and folded.

Julianna was the first one with the courage to talk to her.

Tillie had set her shirts on her bed and turned to find the owner of the bedroom in the doorway.

“Hey,” Julianna greeted.

Tillie just nodded.

“We need to talk about this,” Julianna said, her tone low and wary.

“Where do we even start,” Tillie grumbled. This was why she’d walked out of the dining room. Even considering Tom’s theory just overwhelmed her.

“I don’t believe Tom,” Julianna said, a bit bolder. “I mean…he’s been pining after you for some time now. I wouldn’t put it past him to make up something like this to force you to stay at the compound, or at least under supervision.”

As much as Tillie was not Tom’s biggest fan at the moment, she had to defend him.

“Tom wouldn’t make up a story. He’s not that kind of person.”

“When it comes to you, something about him is just off, Tillie. You can’t be sure what he’s thinking.”

“I know what he’s thinking. He told me. He’s not lying. He didn’t see whoever I was talking to.” She tried to step past Julianna. “That doesn’t mean she wasn’t there, though.”

“Which is why you need to let me come with you,” Julianna said, shifting slightly so that Tillie couldn’t quite get clear. She seemed to be more uncomfortable with their conversation than Tillie was. “So we can prove it.”

“No,” Tillie said.

“Why not?”

“Because…” she stopped, struggling for the right answer. “Because they don’t want other people there. It took days before she would even talk to me.”

“Yes, Tom said you said it was a nun?” Julianna’s nose scrunched a bit. “Kind of odd if you ask me. What are they doing, just living in the middle of the zombie apocalypse?”

“Basically,” Tillie mumbled.

“Well, the sooner I can prove they exist, the sooner all this goes away,” Julianna coaxed. “I’m sure she would understand, to prove that you’re not…not hallucinating or anything, wouldn’t they?”

It was reasonable. It made perfect sense. And still, something in Tillie screamed NO.

Because…what if Sr. Mary Pio didn’t come out? Saw Julianna and didn’t show herself?

Or what if Tom was right and she didn’t exist at all?

“I’ll think about it,” Tillie lied. “Now can I please go?”

Julianna flushed pink and moved out of Tillie’s way. With her past, Tillie was pretty sure Julianna loathed the idea of confining anyone anywhere. In a small way, to force a conversation, or a larger way, even if it was to help someone.

She stayed at the compound for the next few days. Avoided everyone whenever she could. Spoke to no one at meals. Felt like a damn prisoner. Although Tillie was quite sure she could sneak out without anyone knowing, as she’d done it dozens of times, she was sure that if she did, someone would come after her and bring her back, and she didn’t want to push, to see how far they would go. At least, not yet.

Not until Tom knocked softly on her door very late on the third night.

In spite of living right next to each other, the two couldn’t have been farther apart if they’d been on opposite poles. It seemed Tom avoided her as much as she avoided him. She no longer felt like he was watching her – instead, it was everyone else. While she was sure that no one was maliciously gossiping about why she’d been brought back from her wanderings, she also knew that it was impossible to keep secrets for too long in a group this small. Julianna was bound to have talked to Heidi, and Heidi was with Phil, so it was going to get around.

So, she didn’t quite hesitate to open the door to him.

“How are you?” he asked.

“How should I be?” she returned.

He flinched. “Ottille, please don’t be angry at me. I did what I did because I care about you.”

She turned, flopped down on her bed. She didn’t want the whole house to hear them talking so she gestured for Tom to shut the door.

“What do you want, Tom,” she asked, her tone flat.

He shuffled, his tall frame shifting awkwardly. “You haven’t taken Julianna up on her offer to go with you.”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“No.”

He let out his breath in frustration. “Dammit, Tillie, why are you digging your heels in on this? If there’s someone there, she’ll see them, and all of this will be over!”

“This thing _you_ started,” she growled, suddenly hating him. It was his fault. She’d never have doubted herself like this if he hadn’t been so obsessive that he felt the need to follow her. “What did you think was going to happen?”

Tom grew very still. She knew this move. She’d seen it when she made him really, really angry. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything,” she returned. “I’m asking. Why did you follow me? And don’t tell me it’s because you _love_ me.”

The wounded look was back, but it was accompanied by something much worse. Betrayal. “I’m sorry that’s so distasteful to you.”

She stood up. “Tell me why you followed me!” she demanded.

“Because I was worried about you!” he snapped. “Do you have any idea how you’ve been acting? You never used to be like this, but suddenly…it’s like you’re a whole other person, and I can’t figure it out! And then I see you…talking to…to God-knows-what…and then it makes sense!” He glared down at her, stepping up to meet her toe to toe. “Something. Is. Wrong. With you, Tillie. And unless you let someone go with you to prove that there is something there…then Mason says we’re not going to let you leave the compound alone anymore.”

She froze. “You mean lock me up?”

“Of course not, but…you’d have to be watched closely. To make sure you didn’t sneak off. It’s for your protection, Ottille.”

“You’d keep me prisoner…for my _protection_ ,” she spat.

He looked anguished again. “Tillie, please—”

“Get out of my room,” she whispered, suddenly near tears.

He just stared at her, silently pleading.

She didn’t say it again. So he left.

Tillie waited two more days. Then, in the quietest, deadest part of the night, she went and got her old tent and her old sleeping back, packed what few clothes she felt she would need, and left the compound.


End file.
